Molecular Identification and Phylogenetic Analysis of Cucumber Mosaic Virus IB Subgroup from Althaea officinalis

Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) belongs to the genus Cucumovirus in the family Bromoviridae. Althaea officinalis, commonly known as hollyhocks in the family Malvaceae, is an annual plant whose fruit, flower and root are used as medicinal products. In this study, five samples of hollyhocks leaves with viral symptoms were collected and CMV was detected using DAS-ELISA from the samples. Ta-alth isolate was selected and total RNA extracted. The PCR reaction was performed using CMV-CPF and CMV-CPR primer pair corresponding to the CP region of CMV and as a result, a 675 bp band was amplified. The amplified fragment inserted into pTZ57R/T and transformed into competent cells of E. coli strain DH5α. Extracted recombinant plasmid was analyzed by restriction analysis then sequencing. The GeneDoc was used to compare the generated CP sequence with the counterpart segment of previously reported CMV isolates from Iran and other parts of the world available in GenBank. A phylogenetic tree was generated with Neighbor-Joining (NJ) method in TREECON program which showed that the Ta-alth isolate belonged to subgroup IB of CMV. This is the first report of CMV from Althaea officinalis in Iran.