Pepino mosaic virus: variability in strains (Poster Session IV)

Pepino mosaic virus is an example of a plant virus that has caused significant agronomical problems in a relatively short period of time. Since its first description from Pepino plants (Solanum muricatum) collected in 1974 in Peru, the virus remained insignificant for a long time. A tomato strain manifested itself in commercial tomato crops in Europe in 1998. Since then the virus has been reported worldwide and has become an important virus disease in commercial tomato production. Recently a number of new strains of the virus have been described. These strains differ significantly in sequence from the tomato and Pepino strains. These new strains may play an important role in the increase of the agricultural importance of PepMV. Not only between but also within strains, sequence differences and variations are observed. These range from minor point mutations to recombinations between strain specific sequences. With the growing spread of molecular detection and diagnostic techniques, often relying on the presence of specific sequences, these sequence variations will inevitably lead to false negative results. These may have serious economic consequences. Sequence variations between different PepMV isolates were studied and used to design general PepMV primers as well as strain specific primer sets. These primer sets may play an important role in reliable detection programmes as well as epidemiological studies on the distribution and spread of the virus and its strains.