Determination of Biological and Molecular Characteristics of Urmian Isolate of Watermelon mosaic Virus

Watermelon mosaic virus is the most prevalent potyvirus infecting cucurbits in Iran. In order to determine the distribution and frequency of the virus, 326 watermelon, melon, cucumber, winter and summer squash samples were collected from 22 villages around Urmia during summer 2010 and tested by DAS-ELISA with a polyclonal antibody. Ninety four samples were detected as infected by ELISA. To determine host range of the virus, different plants from 4 familieas were tested. Cucurbita pepo, Cucumis melo L. Cv. Flexus, C.sativus L.cv. Peto Seed and Nicotiana tobaccum cv. Burley were detected as the virus hosts. One strain of squash that was positive in ELISA was used for IC-RT-PCR. A 958 bp product was amplified by IC-RT-PCR using specific primers and was sent for sequencing directly. Phylogenetic trees were constructed by Maximum likelihood, Maximum parsimony and Neighbour joining. Urmian isolate of WMV was not classified in any of the 6 groups which were shown by previous researches.