Some properties of lentogenic Australian newcastle disease virus

The Newcastle disease virus (NDV) occurring in Australia is apathogenic for chickens following natural infections. Some properties of the avirulent Australian V4 strain of NDV and of 12 new isolates of NDV were compared. The viruses grew to high titres following infection of chick embryos by the allantoic cavity and allantoic fluid had infectivity titres of from 108·7 to 109·5 EID50 0.2 ml. With only two isolates did sufficient mortalities occur to allow calculation of mean death times and these were in excess of 140 h. Five of nine isolates failed to kill 100% of embryos when doses in excess of 107·9 EID50 were used. When strain V4 was inoculated into the yolk sac of 10-day-old embryos, the LD50 was similar to the ID50 obtained with allantoic cavity inoculation, and the mean death time was 103 h. The intracerebral pathogenicity index for strain V4 was 0.91 and 1.02 in two experiments. The index was not significantly reduced when the virus was taken through a further cycle of plaque purification or when the inoculum was heated at 56°C for 30 min. Chickens with maternally derived antibody to NDV were not susceptible to intracerebral inoculation with strain V4. Chickens dying after intracerebral inoculation with strain V4 had haemorrhagic and necrotic liver lesions. The intracerbral pathogenicity indices for four other isolates varied from 0 to 0.22. The infectivity of V4 and three other isolates was relatively stable at 56°C and that of another eight isolates was labile. Haemagglutinins of all viruses studied were stable at 56°C for longer than 60 min. None of four isolates tested lost haemagglutinin activity on treatment with ether. Haemagglutination-elution patterns were variable but four isolates did not elute from chicken erythrocytes after 24 h at 4°C and strain V4 and isolate PM12 did not elute after 96 h at 4°C. Six viruses, including V4, agglutinated erythrocytes from all of six test horses. The haemagglutinin activity of the remaining viruses varied between horses. Four viruses including V4 haemolysed chicken erythrocytes. Gradient centrifugation allowed the separation of an infectious and a noniffectious haemagglutinin. Haemolytic activity was associated with the infectious haemagglutinin