아프리카ㆍ중동

In July 2023, cantaloupe (Cucumis melo L.) grown in one-hectare field in Rudsar, Guilan province, Iran, exhibited symptoms such as mosaic, chlorosis, blistering, and crinkling in around 15 plants. To identify the virome in symptomatic cantaloupes, total RNA was extracted from 15 leaf samples using TRIzol. Total RNA was pooled into a single sample and subject to high-throughput sequencing (HTS) on an Illumina HiSeq 2000 instrument (Novogene, China). After quality control and trimming, host genome subtraction was performed using CLC Genomics Workbench (version 20, QIAGEN, Venlo, The Netherlands). Screening the assembled contigs (104,534 contigs) using BLASTn revealed the presence of melon partitivirus, cucumber mosaic virus and zucchini yellow mosaic virus. Two large contigs (1545 and 1654 nt in length) identified for melon partitivirus RNA1 and RNA2 showed 86.98 and 98.37% nucleotide identity with melon partitivirus isolates MCV1 (NC_040483) and MCV2 (NC_040484) from Brazil, respectively. RT-PCR was carried out on the 15 individual symptomatic samples of the composite sample using newly designed melon partitivirus RNA1-specific primers based on the HTS-recovered sequences (Partitivirus-F/R 5′- ATCCCTCCAACACTACGATGT-3′/5′-CCCTCRCAGTTGGAAGGCTA - 3′), yielding a 352 bp amplicon. Results revealed the occurrence of melon partitivirus in 13 out of the 15 samples. The PCR amplicons were sequenced and showed 94.89% nt identities with the melon partitivirus isolate MCV1 from Brazil (NC_040483). Sequences of melon partitivirus (RNA1, RNA2, and a small RNA1 fragment) were deposited in GenBank as accession numbers PP996026, PQ181505, and PQ181504, respectively. Melon partitivirus has previously been reported in Brazil (Vainio et al. 2018). This is the first report of this virus from Iran and the second record in the world. Research on the virus geographical distribution, prevalence, and transmission is needed.