Identification and characterization of viruses causing disease in some winter vegetables grown in the Eastern Mediterranean Region

This study was carried out to detect the viruses and determine their prevalence on winter vegetable species (lettuce, spinach, cabbage, cauliflower, radish) cultivated in the Eastern Mediterranean region between 2007-2012.Samples were taken from 808 lettuce, 330 cabbage, 225 spinach, 65 radishes and 137 cauliflower plants suspected of being infected with CMV, TSWV, TuMV, BWYV, LMV, LBVV, CaMV, RaMV, LiYV, BtMV, or BCTV. Totally 1595 plant samples were tested by ELISA. MiLBVV, LMV, TSWV, CMV, and BWYV were detected in 380, 82, 3, 3, 3 of lettuce samples respectively. BWYV and CMV were detected in 90 and 3 of spinach samples, respectively. BWYV, CMV, TuMV were detected in 11, 6, 3 of radish plants respectively. In addition, 10 cabbage and one cauliflower plants were found to be infected with TuMV and CaMV respectively. At least one virus was detected in 595 samples and infection rate of tested plants was 37.3 %. Expected sizes of DNA bands were obtained from RT PCR studies. Sequence analysis of CMV isolate used in this study showed 44% similarity with isolates from South Korea, Japan, and China; TSWV isolate showed 96% similarity with isolates from Greece, Serbia, and South Korea; TuMV isolate showed 84% similarity with a Chinese isolate; LMV isolate showed 99% similarity with an American isolate; MiLBVV isolate 98% with and isolate rom Netherland; CaMV isolate showed 95% similarity with a Chinese isolate, BWYV isolate showed 89% similarity with a Chinese isolate; and LBVV isolate showed 95% similarity with an isolate from Spain.Key Words: Winter Vegetables, Mechanical Inoculation, DAS-ELISA, RT-PCR, Sequence Analysis