Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Journal Of Plant Pathology, cilt.86, sa.2, ss.179, 2004 (SCI-Expanded)
Widespread symptoms of
a possible virus disease were repeatedly observed in melon
crops (Cucumis melo) grown in the provinces of Mersin,
Adana, and Ur- fa (south-west Turkey). Affected plants showed mild to chlorotic mottling of the leaves,
deformation of the blades, and chlorotic
patches on the fruits. A virus was consistenly recovered from symptomatic leaf samples from different
areas by mechanical transmission to herbaceous hosts. Symptoms in inoculated melon seedlings were the same as those observed in the field. ELISA tests of leaf extracts
from naturally and artificial- ly infected melon plants gave positive reactions with two antisera to Squash mosaic virus (SqMV; genus Comovirus, family Comoviridae), supplied either by Dr. H. Lecoq (INRA, Montfavet, France) or a Turkish company (Lo- jistic). Since
the seeds used to establish the
crops had been imported
from abroad and
SqMV is known
to be seed-borne, seeds from imported seed batches were ob- tained from the farms where the disease occurred. SqMV was consistently detected by ELISA
in germinat- ed seeds from all batches.
SqMV has several
strains for three of which (Kimble, Arizona and Melon) partial
se- quences are available (Hu
et al., 1993; Haudenshield and Palukaitis,
1998). Strain-specific primers, designed by using
Genbank sequences AF059533 (Kimble strain), AF059532 (Arizona strain), and M96148 (Melon strain), were
used in PCR assays for amplifying reverse tran- scribed viral RNA extracted from diseased plants. Am- plicons of the expected
size (579 bp) were obtained
only with primers specific to the Kimble strain. This is the first report of the occurrence of SqMV in Turkey, where it has probably been introduced with imported seeds.