The First Report of Tomato torrado virus (ToTV) occurrence in Iran

Emerging plant diseases accounts for serious treats to agricultural crop yields, and food security. Tomato torrado virus (ToTV) for the first time was reported in canary island (Spain) from greenhouse-grown tomato plants expressing yellowing areas at the base of the leaflets which later turn into necrotic spots or large necrotic area covering leaves, stem and fruit (Verbeek et al., 2007). During a field survey carried out during spring 2021, a total number of 14 tomato plant samples showing severe necrosis symptoms on tomato leaves and fruits, similar to those described for ToTV (Moodley et al., 2019), were collected from an open tomato field in vicinity of Shiraz. , Total RNA was extracted from leaf and fruit tissues of 14 symptomatic samples using Trizol reagent, and for the presence of ToTV was subjected to reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) using a set of specific primer pair (3Avp/35seq R and 3Avp/35seq F) targeting approximately a 275 nucleotide fragment in the coat protein gene (Wieczoreck et al. 2020). Eleven symptomatic tomato samples yielded an amplicon of the expected size ( about 275 bp) in RT-PCR assay, Multiple alignment of the obtained nucleotide sequences showed that the Iranian ToTV isolates have the highest similarity of 98.2% (IRSHZ1) and 97.3% (IRSHZ3) with ToTV strain TEN-03 and the lowest similarity of 96.8% (IRSHZ1) and 95.4% (IRSHZ3) with ToTV strain GNC-06, both of which were reported from Spain