Research article

MOLECULAR DETECTION OF ZUCCHINI YELLOW MOSAIC VIRUS (ZYMV) INFECTING CUCURBITS IN IRAQ USING NESTED RT-PCR

Hassan Hussein Mohammed and Nawres A.S. Alkuwaiti

Online First: February 22, 2023


This study was initiated to investigate Zucchini yellow mosaic virus (ZYMV) using Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and species specific nested primers. Leaf samples were collected from symptomatic cucurbits grown in fields located at Al-Qadisiyyah and Baghdad provinces. Potyviruses were screened using double antibody sandwich enzyme linked immuno-sorbent assay (DAS-ELISA) and group specific primers. Nested RT-PCR was performed to confirm ZYMV in potyvirus positive samples. DAS-ELISA screening could detect potyvirus in 17 out of 181 cucurbit samples. Based on nested RT-PCR, 6 out of 17 were ZYMV infected. Sequence comparison confirmed the detection of ZYMV when DNA fragments amplified shared 99.29% maximum nucleotide identity with the equivalent ZYMV sequences from Iran (KU528623.1) and Israel (OL311706.1) indicating common origin. Neighbor-joining phylogenetic tree confirmed the relatedness when grouped all sequences isolated form zucchini squash, bitter apple, watermelon. melon and cucumber to equivalent ZYMV sequences from the Genbank. This study confirmed bitter apple is a new host to ZYMV. Thus, ZYMV can be a serious threat to cucurbits in Iraq as it showed to infects wild local hosts.

Keywords

Mosaic, wild gourd, potyviruses, nested primers, DAS-ELISA