Phytopathology (2021) 111, 1051-1058

Armelle Marais, Sergio Murolo, Chantal Faure, Yoann Brans, Clément Larue, François Maclot, Sébastien Massart, Michela Chiumenti, Angelantonio Minafra, Gianfranco Romanazzi, Marie Lefebvre, Teresa Barreneche, Cécile Robin, Rémy J. Petit and Thierry Candresse (2021)
Sixty years from the first disease description, a novel Badnavirus associated with chestnut mosaic disease
Phytopathology 111 (6), 1051-1058
Abstract: Although chestnut mosaic disease (ChMD) was described several decades ago, its etiology is still not clear. Using classical approaches and high-throughput sequencing (HTS) techniques, we identified a novel Badnavirus that is a strong etiological candidate for ChMD. Two disease sources from Italy and France were submitted to HTS-based viral indexing. Total RNAs were extracted, ribodepleted, and sequenced on an Illumina NextSeq500 (2 × 150 nt or 2 × 75 nt). In each source, we identified a single contig of ~7.2 kb that corresponds to a complete circular viral genome and shares homologies with various badnaviruses. The genomes of the two isolates have an average nucleotide identity of 90.5%, with a typical badnaviral genome organization comprising three open reading frames. Phylogenetic analyses and sequence comparisons showed that this virus is a novel species; we propose the name Chestnut mosaic virus (ChMV). Using a newly developed molecular detection test, we systematically detected the virus in symptomatic graft-inoculated indicator plants (chestnut and American oak) as well in chestnut trees presenting typical ChMD symptoms in the field (100 and 87% in France and Italy surveys, respectively). Datamining of publicly available chestnut sequence read archive transcriptomic data allowed the reconstruction of two additional complete ChMV genomes from two Castanea mollissima sources from the United States as well as ChMV detection in C. dentata from the United States. Preliminary epidemiological studies performed in France and central eastern Italy showed that ChMV has a high incidence in some commercial orchards and low within-orchard genetic diversity.
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Link to article at publishers website
Database assignments for author(s): Sergio Murolo, Gianfranco Romanazzi

Research topic(s) for pests/diseases/weeds:
molecular biology - genes
identification/taxonomy

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Pest and/or beneficial records:

Beneficial	Pest/Disease/Weed	Crop/Product	Country	Quarant.
	Badnavirus tessellocastaneae	Chestnut (Castanea)	France
	Badnavirus tessellocastaneae	Chestnut (Castanea)	Italy