First Report of Barley yellow striate mosaic virus on Wheat in China

In the spring of 2014, a survey of viral diseases on wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) was carried out in Hebei Province, China. The samples with virus-like symptoms of dwarfing and flag leaf yellowing were collected in Zhaoxian, Quyang, Anxin, and Luannan. To reproduce the viral symptoms and confirm whether the unknown virus was transmitted by insect vectors, the nymphs of aviruliferous planthopper (Laodelphax striatellus Fallen, Homoptera: Delphacidae) were transferred onto diseased wheat from the field for a 3-day acquisition access period and a 10-day incubation on fresh wheat seedlings, and then were exposed to 2- to 3-leaf stage wheat seedlings of wheat variety Shixin828 for a 3-day inoculation access period. The infected wheat plants developed mosaic symptoms on the young leaves at 7 days post inoculation (dpi), and followed with severe symptoms including stunting, chlorotic spots, and striation along the veins of leaves at around 14 dpi. The infection symptoms were same as in the field but distinct from wheat infected with Rice black streaked dwarf virus (RBSDV) or Northern cereal mosaic virus (NCMV). For further confirmation, total RNA was extracted from the symptomatic wheat leaves, and NCMV specific primers, NCMV-PF/NCMV-PR (5′-ATGGATAAGAAAGCAAGTGGA-3′/5′-TTAAAAGTCGGCATACGGGTC-3′) and RBSDV specific primers, S10-F/S10-R (5′-TTACCCAACATCACGCAACT-3′/5′-GAGCAGGAACTTCACGACAAC-3′) were used for amplification of sequences of phosphoprotein and coat protein genes, respectively. Neither RBSDV nor NCMV were present in the symptomatic tissue according to the RT-PCR assay (4). Tissues derived from symptomatic wheat leaves were fixed and embedded in Spurr's resin and used for ultra-thin sectioning and transmission electron microscopy observations, revealing large amounts of Rhabdovirus-like particles in the cytoplasm. The identified particles were about 315 to 353 × 46 to 57 nm, similar in size to Barley yellow striate mosaic virus (BYSMV), a member of the genus Cytorhabdovirus reported from Italy (2). The specific primer pair (5′-ACTAAGGGGGTACTCCGACC-3′ and 5′-CTGATCTGCTTTGAGGGGCA-3′) was designed based on the reported polymerase (L) gene sequence of BYSMV isolate Zanjan-1 (GenBank Accession No. FJ665628) (1), and used for the BYSMV detection by RT-PCR. A single bright band of the expected size (~500 bp) was obtained from total RNA extracted from the plants exhibiting symptoms in the greenhouse. No such band was amplified from asymptomatic plants, while 15 out of 23 field samples also produced the same 500-bp products in RT-PCR. PCR products from three virus-positive field samples were sequenced directly and the sequences were submitted to GenBank (KM052176, KM052177, and KM052178). BLAST search showed that the sequences shared 96 to 97% nucleotide identity with the polymerase L gene sequence of BYSMV isolate Zanjan-1, whereas only 73 to 75% identity with NCMV (AB030277 and GU985153) (1,3,5). To our knowledge, this is the first report of BYSMV occurrence on wheat in China. References: (1) R. Almasi et al. J. Phytopathol. 158:351, 2010. (2) A. Appiano et al. Cytol. 6:105, 1974. (3) H. C. Chen et al. Sci. Agric. Sinica 3:64, 1980. (4) X. F. Duan et al. Acta Phytopathol. Sinica 40:337, 2010. (5) F. Tanno et al. Arch. Virol. 145:1373, 2000.