Determination of Plum pox virus and Molecular Characterization of Partial Coat Protein Gene in Burdur Province

Abstract

Plum pox virus (PPV), the causal agent of Sharka disease, causes significant yield losses in stone fruits. Despite PPV occurrence as restricted in different regions of Turkey, there is no record of PPV yet in Burdur province. Hence, this study includes the results for determining the presence of PPV in Burdur province between 2016-2019 by serological and molecular methods. A total of 47 leaf samples collected during the surveys were first analyzed by Double antibody sandwich enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (DAS-ELISA), and only 2-peach samples were determined to be infected with PPV. A degenerate primer pair that amplifies a 767 bp product was designed for the partial coat protein region of PPV in this study. Reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was performed using designed primer pair, and novel isolates obtained by sequence analysis were deposited in the GenBank. As a result of the BlastN analysis, Burdur PPV isolates showed the highest similarity (99.86% -98.49%) with the PPV-M strain. The phylogenetic tree was generated by the Neighbor-Joining method, resulting in novel PPV-Burdur