Disease Note. First Report of Persimmon Cryptic Virus in Spain

Japanese persimmon (Dyospiros kaki) is an emerging crop in the Mediterranean area of Spain. Up to date only three viroids and three viruses (Citrus viroid VI, Apple fruit crinkle viroid, Persimmon viroid, Persimmon virus A, Persimmon latent virus and Persimmon cryptic virus) have been described to infect this crop. In spring 2015, a persimmon sample from Algemesi (Ribera del Xuquer) showing interveinal chlorosis and necrosis of leaves was analyzed by next generation sequencing of siRNAs using Illumina technology. A total of 1415 contigs were assembled de novo by Velvet and analyzed by Blastn and TBlastx. Only seven contigs were related to a plant viral sequence, corresponding to Persimmon cryptic virus (PeCV), a putative member of the genus Deltapartitivirus, family Partitiviridae. This virus was first identified in Apulia (Italy), showing necrosis of the veinlets on leaves (Morelli et al., 2015) and it has been recently reported in Turkey (Morelli and Arli-Sokmen, 2016). Five persimmon symptomatic and five symptomless samples from the same growing area were analyzed by RT-PCR using the specific primers CryKaF 5’-AGCTCCACGACCGATTGTGC-3’ and CryNeR 5’-ACGAAGACACGTAACACGCAGTGG-3’ (Morelli et al., 2015). Two fragments of 608 and 593 bp, corresponding to the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase and the coat protein, respectively, were successfully amplified in 9 of these samples. The nucleotide sequences (GenBank accession Nos. KX352443 and KX352444) were identical in all Spanish samples and shared an identity percentage of 99.8 and 99.2% with the RdRp and the CP of the Italian isolate. Although no other virus has been detected in Spanish persimmon trees, the fact that the cryptic virus is present in both symptomatic and asymptomatic plants questions its association with the observed symptomatology. This is the first report of Persimmon cryptic virus in Spain.