First report of Persimmon Cryptic virus in Turkey

Persimmon cryptic virus (PeCV), a putative member of the genus Deltapartitivirus, family Partitiviridae, was first identified in a Japanese persimmon (Diospyros kaki) tree growing in Apulia (southern Italy), and showing an extensive necrosis of the veinlets on both sides of the leaf blades (Morelli et al., 2012). In the early summer of 2015, similar symptoms were observed on several trees of some autochthonous cultivars growing in two distinct orchards in Samsun province (northern Turkey). The presence of PeCV was ascertained in Turkish persimmon accessions by RT-PCR using the specific primer pair CryKaF/CryNeR, designed in the coat protein (CP) gene encoded by RNA2 (Morelli et al., 2015). A 144-bp amplicon, obtained from symptomatic accession S3, was cloned into pSC-A-amp/kan and custom-sequenced (Macrogen Europe, The Netherlands). BLAST analyses showed that the cloned PeCV sequence, deposited in GenBank under accession no. KT962117, shared ca. 96% identity at the nucleotide level with that of the Italian isolate SSPI (HE805114). All tested samples were negative for Persimmon virus A (PeVA), another cytorhabdovirus species putatively associated with persimmon vein necrosis disease (Morelli et al., 2014). Nevertheless, whether or not PeCV is involved in symptom appearance, remains to be ascertained. To our knowledge, this is the first report of PeCV in a country other than Italy.