VIEW ARTICLE

Etiology

Different Tomato Bushy Stunt Virus Strains That Cause Disease Outbreaks in Solanaceous Crops in Spain. Marisol Luis- Arteaga, Servicio de Investigación Agraria, Apdo.727, 50080 Zaragoza, Spain; Emilio Rodríguez-Cerezo(2), Aurora Fraile(3), Elisa Sáez(4), and Fernando García-Arenal(5). (2)Centro Nacional de Biotecnología (CSIC), Cantoblanco, 28049 Madrid; (3)(5)Departamentode Biotecnología, E.T.S. Ingenieros Agrónomos, 28040 Madrid; (4)Servicio de Protección de los Vegetales, El Ejido, Almería, Spain. Phytopathology 86:535-542. Accepted for publication 7 February 1996. Copyright 1996 The American Phytopathological Society. DOI: 10.1094/Phyto-86-535.

Tomato bushy stunt virus (TBSV) was detected for the first time in Spain in 1994 in two main horticultural areas of the southeast. TBSV was the cause of economically important diseases in greenhouse-grown tomato and eggplant in the El Ejido area and in greenhouse- and open field-grown tomato in the Mazarrón area. Field isolates from both regions and several reference strains of TBSV were characterized by serology and by determining the nucleotide sequence of a 0.9-kb segment at the 3’ end of the viral genomic RNA. Isolates from El Ejido were closely related to the BS3 strain of TBSV, a strain that is responsible for disease outbreaks in solanaceous plants in neighboring countries. In contrast, isolates from Mazarrón were very closely related to the cherry strain of TBSV, a strain that typically infects rosaceous trees worldwide and that has never been reported to infect tomato naturally. The results reported here contribute to a better understanding of the taxonomy of tombusviruses.