Determination and characterization of plum pox potyvirüs (PPV, Sharka) on stone fruits at east mediterranean region

Plum pox potyvirus, (Sharka, PPV) causes one of the most serious diseases of Prunus fruit trees worldwide and has caused major economic losses across Europe, Asia and America. In the Çukurova region part of Turkey close to EastMediterrranean seaside, is important table stone fruit growing area, a sudden outbreak of Sharka disease was noticed in spring-summer of 2006-2009. Fruits of several peach, nectarine, plum, apricot and almond varietes displayed obvious symptoms of Sharka consisting of rings and mottling spread over the whole surface of fruits and also immature and mature fruit droping. The identity of PPV was proved using commercial polyclonal antisera (Bioreba, Reinac/Switzerland) by Double Antibody Sandwich Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (DAS-ELISA) in buds, leaves and fruits with symptoms. All isolates are identified as PPV-M by Indirect DAS-ELISA. Also by Restriction Fragment Lenght Polymorphism (RFLP) and strain spesific primers. The Survey was resulted in orchards of nectarine (cv.silverking), peach (cv.richmay) aptricot (cv.priana, cv.precoce de tyrinthe and cv.nimfa) and almond (cv.Tuona and cv. Ferragnes) with different infection ratio. Totaly 13 orchards were found infected (% 5,31) in 285 and 15 samples were discarded as Çukurova region isolates to characterization; Additional infection percentages were %12,5 in Adana and %5,55 in Mersin provinces. As a result of Coat protein gene sequence analysis, Occurence of PPV-M1 and PPV-M2 subclusters were noted among the regional isolates. It seems that the isolates from almond, in Çukurova are first detected and reported at almond in Turkey. To our knowledge this is a preliminarly report of important PPV outbreak for the regional stone fruit production, in contrast to liminarly regional infection rate before in EastMediterrranean.Key words: Sharka, East Mediterranea Region, DAS-ELISA, RT-PCR, Stone Fruits.