Occurrence and characterization of a severe isolate of Watermelon mosaic virus from Argentina

PEROTTO M.C.; CELLI M G; POZZI E. A.; LUCIANI C. E.; CONCI V. C.

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PLANT PATHOLOGY

SPRINGER

Lugar: Berlin; Año: 2016

0929-1873

AbstractMore than 50 viruses have been reported in cucurbit crops worldwide. InArgentina, cucurbit viruses have been associated with important yield losses.The most prevalent and widespread potyvirus is Watermelon mosaic virus(WMV). WMV was detected in Argentina in all cucurbit species with highincidence. In this study, a WMV isolate (WMV 1 SDE FF) was obtained from anaturally infected squash associated with a severe outbreak on melon and squashcrops in an important cucurbit growing area in Santiago del Estero province(Argentina), during a survey conducted in November 2012. The fully sequencedWMV 1 SDE FF genome consists of 10,027 nucleotides and shares 96 % ntidentity and 98 % aa identity with the French isolates JF273464.1|C07?014and EU660581.1|FMF00-LL1 of the WMV molecular group 3. Using the recombinationdetection program RDP4, two statistically significant recombination events wereidentified: event 1, an 830-nt long recombinant fragment in the putative P1coding region, and event 2, a 4071-nt recombinant fragment detected across theHC Pro, P3 and CI coding regions. The putative parental sequences detected forevent 1 were the EU660586.1| FBR04?37 (major parent) and JF273468.1|C07?284(minor parent), both from France. Putative parental sequences for event 2 wereJX079685.1| WMV-ShanXi (major parent) and HQ384216.1|Dendrobium (minor parent),from China and USA, respectively. To our knowledge, this is the first completegenome of an Argentine WMV isolate. Our results provide evidence that WMV 1 SDEFF is the causal agent of the strong outbreak reported in melon and squashfields in recent years.