FIRST REPORT OF EGGPLANT MOTTLED DWARF VIRUS IN TOBACCO CROPS IN ALBANIA

Abstract

In summer 2008 and 2009, tobacco plants of cvs Lovina and Katerini (Samsun) displaying severe stunting, leaf crinkling and vein clearing (VC) (incidence of diseased plants 0.1%) were ob- served in areas of Koritsa and Elbasan (Albania). Leaf extract from five affected plants collected in 2009 was used for mechani- cal inoculations of Nicotiana benthamiana, N. rustica and Gom- phrena globosa. Twenty-thirty days post inoculation, N. benthami- ana developed a systemic VC, while N. rustica reacted with yel- low spots in the inoculated leaves followed by systemic VC. In G. globosa only red local lesions were observed. Leaves from 10 symptomatic and 10 symptomless tobacco plants were collected from different fields and tested serologically by DAS-ELISA us- ing polyclonal antisera to Eggplant mottled dwarf virus (EMDV) (As 0136 antiserum, DSMZ, Braunschweig, Germany). All sam- ples from symptomatic plants tested positive. To confirm the presence of EMDV a one-step RT-PCR as described by Katis et al. (2011) was carried out to the same samples and one of the PCR products was sequenced. BLAST analysis of the obtained sequence revealed 98% nucleotide similarity with the homolo- gous published sequences of the EMDV isolates from tobacco (AM922318), cucumber (AM922317), Pittosporum tobira (AM922320) and 88% with those of virus isolates from eggplant (AM922319) and caper (AM922321), respectively. The obtained sequence was deposited in EMBL-EBI under the accession No. HE601787. EMDV is known since 1969 and is generally consid- ered to be of minor importance. It has been reported to infect to- bacco in Italy and Greece (Chatzivassiliou et al., 2004). To our knowledge this is the first report of EMDV in tobacco in Alba- nia, even though its economic importance is limited.