Asra Salari

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.