FIRST REPORT OF BLUEBERRY MOSAIC-ASSOCIATED VIRUS IN HIGHBUSH BLUEBERRY IN SERBIA

Abstract

From 2012 to 2014 symptoms of yellow to yellowish green, white and pink mosaic patterns were observed on the leaves of highbush blueberry (Vaccinium corymbosum) plants in two locations of Serbia. These symptoms resembled those of blueberry mosaic disease. After several unsuccessful attempts to identify the agent of the disease, Thekke-Veetil et al. (2014) detected the presence of a virus in the samples with mosaic symptoms and named it Blueberry mosaic-associated virus (BlMaV). A total of 13 samples were collected and tested by RT-PCR for the presence of BlMaV. Total nucleic acids were extracted from fresh and frozen leaves with CTAB method (Li et al., 2008). RT-PCR reactions were carried out with specific BlMaV primers designed to amplify a fragment from the 3’ part of RNA 1 of the BlMaV genome (Thekke-Veetil et al., 2014). The expected 756 bp PCR fragment was obtained from all the nine samples with mosaic symptoms from cvs Bluecrop, Duke and Goldtraub and in one sample from an asymptomatic bush of cv. Bluecrop. DNA fragments from five isolates were purified, custom-sequenced (Macrogen, The Netherlands) and the sequences were deposited in GenBank under accession Nos. KP188570-KP188574. Sequences of Serbian isolates were aligned with the BlMaV sequence of the Arkansas isolate of this virus from the USA (accession No. KJ704366). The nucleotide and amino acid sequence identity among the analyzed isolates ranged from 88.0-100.0% and 94.8-100%, respectively. To our knowledge, this is the first report of BlMaV in Serbia.