Phylogenetic status of Grapevine fanleaf virus isolate of Lorestan province of Iran

Grapevine fanleaf virus (GFLV) is a major grapevine infecting virus in the world.

Grapes showing GFLV signs were sampled from the suburbs of the city of Khorramabad in Lorestan Province of Iran in spring 2020 and RT-PCR test was performed to amplify their GFLV-CP gene and the product was sequenced.

Specific primers were able to amplify a 1515 bp fragment of the CP gene. Based on the nucleotide sequence of this fragment, GFLV was first identified in this region. The nucleotide sequence similarity of this isolate was detected at 89.14-95.64% with other isolates in the NCBI library. Also, the phylogenetic tree of these isolates, based on the genomic CP region, grouped GFLV isolates into two groups I and II. The Lorestan GFLV isolate was placed in a subgroup in Group I together with GFLV isolates from the northwestern part of Iran and the Takestan isolate, and isolates from other countries were grouped in a separate subgroup of this group. Also in the phylogenetic tree, the Northeast isolates and the Fars and Kohgiloyeh & Boyer-Ahmad province isolates were classified in Group II.

The results of this research indicate that the virus is endemic and that its likely origin was in Iran and then spread to other parts of the world. The impact of geographic segregation on the evolution of GFLV can also be deduced.