Journal of Plant Pathology Archive

Abstract:

Grapevine Syrah virus 1 (GSyV-1) was first identified in a Californian vineyard of Vitis vinifera cv. Syrah (Al Rwahnih et al., 2009). Since then, its presence has been reported from Chile, Washington (USA), Canada, France, Italy, Slovakia and Czech Republic (Glasa et al., 2015). During a survey of Hungarian vineyards for virus infections, leaf samples were collected from 20 vineyards in May 2014. Small RNA librar- ies of each vineyard were produced and sequenced using an Illumina platform. Bioinformatics analysis of the resulting reads strongly suggested a frequent occurrence of GSyV-1 (15 out of 20 vineyards). Validation by RT-PCR using primers DetF and DetR designed in the methyltransferase gene (Al Rwahnih et al., 2009) resulted in the amplification of a 296 bp product in 10 samples, representing five vines from dis- tant grape-growing regions of the country. Another RT-PCR assay with primers GVQCP-F (5-TCCCAGCTTCAGGGT- GAATT-3’) and GVQCP-R (5’-GCATTGCTGCGCATTG- GAGG-3’) that amplify the coat protein (CP) gene revealed the GSyV-1 specific 720 bp product in all of the predicted samples. Twelve GSyV-1-derived PCR products were purified, sequenced and the sequences were deposited in GenBank. Comparison of the partial methyltransferase gene sequences (KT005394-KT005397) showed 93-97% nucleotide identity, while the partial CP gene sequences (KT005398-KT005405) showed 92-98% nucleotide identity to the reference genome (FJ436028). Their comparison with Slovak and Czech strains showed 94-97% and 70-98% identity, respectively, confirm- ing a high variability of European GSyV-1 strains (Glasa et al., 2015). To our knowledge this is the first report of GSyV-1 in Hungary. Further studies are needed to determine the signifi- cance and relevance of this finding.