Distribution and molecular detection of apple mosaic virus in apple and hazelnut in Turkey

Apple mosaic virus (ApMV) is one of the most important diseases limiting the production of hazelnut and apple in Turkey and the objectives of this research were to determine the convenient and reliable method for RNA isolation and also to determine primer pair for real time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) detection of coat protein gene for Turkish ApMV isolates. Apple mosaic virus isolates were collected in 2007 to 2010 and the presence of the pathogen was detected by double antibody sandwich enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (DAS-ELISA) and RT-PCR tests. Six different RNA extraction protocols and three primer pairs were applied in RT-PCR amplifications and 44 hazelnut and 15 apple ApMV isolates were obtained. All of the amplicons were subjected to enzymatic digestion with restriction endonuclease enzymes and phylogenetic analysis were performed according to the digestion profiles.Keywords: Apple mosaic virus, coat protein gene, hazelnutAfrican Journal of Biotechnology, Vol 13(31) 3144-314