Infectious bronchitis disease is becoming the most challenging disease in broiler fields in Iraq. This disease leads to massive economic loss every round of production. Three vaccine strains H120, Ma5, and 4/91 are used to combat the disease during the production period while outbreaks occur continuously. This study aimed to investigates the prevalence and circulation of Mass and 4/91 IBV strains in the broiler fields in Duhok province which is the first record in the area. Positive samples were obtained from suspected flocks to this disease during 2018-2020. A specific region of S1 was amplified using specific pairs of primers. Genotyping was performed by nested PCR using specified primers for detecting both Mass and 4/91 strains. In the results, all of the positive flocks were infected with nephropathogenic strain 793/B or 4/91. Two of the positive flocks had an infection with both Mass and 4/91. These results indicate that more than one strain circulates in the area as well as shows the weakness of vaccines used in broiler fields.

Avian infectious bronchitis disease is reported as the main problem in the poultry industry in theKurdistan region of Iraq. This study was performed to diagnose Infectious bronchitis among suspected broiler farms located in Duhok governorate, Northern of Iraq as well as to evaluate the efficiency of Real-Time PCR for the detection of the causative virus of this disease. In this study, one hundred and eighty tracheal tissue samples were collected from sixty suspected broiler farms from April 2018 to July 2019. RNA was successfully extracted and used for detection by Real-Time PCR technique using commercial kit targeting 160 bp of S gene which is the conserved region for all avian infectious bronchitis virus strains. Out of sixty suspected farms sixteen (26.66%) farms were positive to the infectious bronchitis virus. This study confirms the presence of avian infectious bronchitis disease in this area by Real-Time PCR. Although a single study was performed to detect this disease by Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction in this governorate, this is the first study to use Real-Time PCR in the diagnosis of this disease in this area and it was highly efficient for detection of this virus.

The high mutation rates of the chicken coronavirus (IBV) cause economic threats to the poultry industry. However, the most dangerous situation is the likelihood of changing its sequences into human coronavirus (COVID-19-like virus). Therefore, in the present study we aimed to investigate the possibility of genetic mutation of IBV to COVID-19. Thus, the sequences of Spike (S1) Glycoprotein genes of both IBV and COVID-19 were aligned, analyzed and calculated to predict the possible changes that could happen in the sequences of S1. The results indicated that in the case of an independent function of probability of each cluster of S1 sequences, the potential mutation rate in the sequences of IBV to be as COVID-19 was equal to 1.87E-96. However, because the tendency for some sequence clusters of S1 gene was low or equal to zero, it is unattainable to mutate the chicken IBV into COVID-19 sequence. Furthermore, in case of the dependent function, the probability of assumed annual mutation to make IBV infectious for human may reach up to around 50% after about 260 years. As a conclusion, the mutating of chicken coronavirus into COVID-19-like virus is not impossible, but it might take a substantial period of time.