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First Report of Tomato torrado virus in Tomato in the Canary Islands, Spain

In 2003, greenhouse-grown tomato crops (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.) in the Canary Islands (Spain) were observed showing an initial yellowing in defined areas at the base of the leaflet that later developed into necrotic spots or an extensive necrotic area progressing from the base to tip. Fruits were also affected, showing necrotic areas and often developing cracking. Generally, the plants that were affected seemed to be burnt, their growth was reduced, and the production level was seriously damaged. Similar symptoms have been observed in Murcia (Spain) since 2001, which have been recently associated with Tomato torrado virus (ToTV) infection (2). Twenty-two tomato samples showing “torrado disease” symptoms were collected from different greenhouses between 2003 and 2006 in Las Palmas (Canary Islands, Spain). To verify the identity of the disease, double-antibody sandwich (DAS)-ELISA was performed on leaf and fruit extracts of symptomatic plants using polyclonal antibodies specific to Potato virus Y (PVY), Tomato mosaic virus (ToMV), Tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV) (Loewe Biochemica, Sauerlach, Germany), and Pepino mosaic virus (PepMV) (DSMZ, Braunschweig, Germany). Total RNA was extracted from the 22 tomato samples with the RNAwiz Extraction kit (Ambion, Huntingdon, United Kingdom) and tested using one-step reverse-transcription (RT)-PCR with the SuperScript Platinum Taq kit (Invitrogen Life Technologies, Barcelona, Spain) with primers specific to PepMV (1) and ToTV (2). All analyses included healthy tomato plants as negative controls. Five of the twenty-two tomato samples were positive for PepMV and negative for the other viruses tested by serological analysis. However, all 22 samples were positive in RT-PCR performed with the primers specific to ToTV segment RNA2. The RT-PCR assay to detect ToTV produced an amplicon of the expected size (580 bp). No amplification product was observed when healthy plants or a water control were used as a template in the RT-PCR reaction. The ToTV RT-PCR product was purified (High Pure PCR Product Purification kit, Roche Diagnostics, Mannheim, Germany) and sequenced. BLAST analysis of one sequence (GenBank Accession No. EF436286) showed 99% identity to ToTV RNA2 sequence (GenBank Accession No. DQ388880). To our knowledge, this is the first report of ToTV in the Canary Islands.

References: (1) I. Pagán et al. Phytopathology 96:274, 2006. (2) M. Verbeek et al. Online Publication. doi:10.1007/s00705-006-0917-6. Arch. Virol., 2007.