Two hundred forty potato samples with one or
more symptoms of leaf mosaic, distortion, mottling and
yellowing were collected between 2005 and 2008 from
seven Iranian provinces. Forty-four of these samples tested
positive with double-antibody sandwich enzyme-linked
immunosorbent assays (DAS-ELISA) using a Potato virus S
(PVS) polyclonal antibody. Of these 12 isolates of PVS were
selected based on the geographical location for biological
and molecular characterization. The full coat protein (CP)
and 11K genes from 12 PVS isolates were PCR amplified,
cloned and sequenced. All 12 PVS isolates showed mosaic
symptoms on Nicotiana debneyii and N. tabacum cv.
Whiteburly and local lesion on Chenopodium amaranticolor,
C. quinoa and C. album. The Iranian isolates share
between 93 and 100% pairwise nucleotide identity with
other PVSO isolates. Based on maximum likelihood phylogenetic
analysis coupled with pairwise identity analysis, we
propose 15 genotypes for the PVSO strain and 3 genotypes
for the PVSA strain.