Abstract
Southern highbush blueberry (interspecific hybrids of Vaccinium corymbosum L.) is cultivated near wild V. corymbosum as well as closely related species in Florida, USA. The expansion of blueberry cultivation into new areas in Florida and deployment of new cultivars containing viruses can potentially increase the diversity of viruses in wild and cultivated V. corymbosum. In this study, viral diversity in wild and cultivated blueberries (V. corymbosum) is described using a metagenomic approach. RNA viromes from V. corymbosum plants collected from six locations (two cultivated and four wild) in North Central Florida were generated by high throughput sequencing (HTS) and analyzed using a bioinformatic analysis pipeline. De novo assembled contigs obtained from viromes of both commercial and wild sites produced sequences with similarities to plant virus species from a diverse range of families (Amalgaviridae, Caulimoviridae, Endornaviridae, Ophioviridae, Phenuiviridae, and Virgaviridae). In addition, this study has enabled the identification of blueberry latent virus (BlLV) and blueberry mosaic associated ophiovirus (BlMaV) for the first time in Florida, as well as a tentative novel tepovirus (blueberry virus T) (BlVT) in blueberry. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that compares viral diversity in wild and cultivated blueberry using a metagenomic approach.
Highlights
The identification of new plant viruses using viral metagenomics has been described in numerous publications [1,2]
We showed that analysis of viromes determined from (dsRNA, positive- and negative-sense single-stranded RNA)
Thepresence presenceof ofscaffolds scaffoldswith withthe thehighest highestsequence sequence match to viruses from a total of genera indicated that the population of match to viruses from a total of 23 genera indicated that the population ofviruses virusesin inthis this host are greatly diverse. This is in agreement with the findings of diverse viral species in previous studies of various wild plant species through viral metagenomics [21,22,23,24,25]
Summary
The identification of new plant viruses using viral metagenomics has been described in numerous publications [1,2]. While the wild plant species in natural settings are known to potentially harbor uncharacterized viruses, most metagenomics studies have focused on the cultivated plant species [2]. The diverse communities of native Vaccinium spp. and the adjacent Florida’s blueberry production areas could serve as a reservoir for a diverse assemblage of viruses in these species, causing spillover and spillback between the wild and cultivated hosts [4]. Another pathway that can potentially cause new emerging viruses in cultivated Vaccinium spp. is the lack of virus screening prior to the use of native, wild blueberries in the development of new SHB cultivars
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