First report of a mosaic disease caused by Tomato ringspot virus on rose and almond plants in Iran.

Abstract

During the 2012 growing season, samples were collected from five rose plantations and five almond orchards in the Fars province (Iran) showing virus-like symptoms such as line-pattern, wrinkling, malformation and chlorotic spots on the leaves. A total of 50 rose and 50 almond leaf samples were tested for the presence of Tomato ringspot virus (ToRSV), Arabis mosaic virus (ArMV) and Tobacco ringspot virus (TRSV) by DAS-ELISA and DBIA using a polyclonal antiserum (Agdia, USA). ToRSV was detected in 22% of the roses and in 10% of almond trees, whereas ArMV and TRSV were not detected in any of the tested samples. ELISA-positive rose and almond samples used for mechanical inoculation of herbaceous hosts yielded necrotic local lesions on Chenopodium amaranticolor, systemic mosaic and mottling on Cucumis sativus, and systemic rugosity on Phaseolus vulgaris. ToRSV was also detected by RT-PCR using the primers ToRS2Vf/ ToRS2Vr (Stewart et al., 2007) and a DNA fragment with expected size ca. 330 bp was amplified from all serologically-positive rose, almond and infected herbaceous plants but not from the apparently healthy ones. Tospoviruses (Ghotbi and Shahraeen, 2012) and Prunus necrotic ringspot virus (PNRSV) (Rakhshandehroo et al., 2006) have previously been found in roses in Iran, which might explain some of the symptoms observed in plants that were ToRSV- negative in ELISA. ArMV, previously found in roses in Iran (Rakhshandehroo et al., 2006), was not detected during this study. ToRSV, which occurs in apple, eggplant, grapevines and pepper in Iran (Moini, 2010; Sokhansanj et al., 2012) has now been found in almond and rose.