First report of tomato brown rugose fruit virus infecting sweet pepper in Syria and Lebanon

After the frst outbreak of tomato brown rugose fruit virus (ToBRFV) in tomato in Jordan (Salem et al. 2016), this virus has been reported from other neighboring countries and worldwide. In early 2020, virus-like symptoms consisting in chlorosis, mosaic and leaves discolorations accompanied with brown stems and fruit deformation were observed on greenhouse-cultivated sweet pepper plants in the coastal regions of Syria (Tartous) and Lebanon (Byblos). A total of 40 symptomatic and 20 asymptomatic plants were sampled in diferent sites in both countries and tested for ToBRFV by real-time RT-PCR using CaTa28/CSP1325 primers and probes (diagnostic protocol PM 7/146, EPPO Bulletin 2021). ToBRFV was found in 44 samples including all symptomatic ones. Furthermore, RT-PCR using specifc primers ToBRFV-F5722/ToBRFV-R6179 amplifying a 458-bp fragment of the coat protein gene (Panno et al. 2019) confrmed the identifcation of ToBRFV. All the samples tested negative for tomato spotted wilt virus, pepino mosaic virus and cucumber mosaic virus in RT-PCR. To confrm the specifcity of the amplifed DNA, one representative RTPCR amplicon from each country was sequenced in both directions. Sequences were deposited in GenBank under the accession numbers OU600529 and OU600530 for the Syrian and Lebanese isolates, respectively. Bioinformatics and BLAST analysis of the sequenced amplicons showed 99.78% similarity between the Syrian and the Lebanese isolates and 99.56% nucleotide identity with TBRFV isolate Ant-Pep (MT002973.1) from Turkey. This is the frst report of ToBRFV infecting sweet pepper plants in Syria and Lebanon.