FIRST REPORT OF CUCUMBER GREEN MOTTLE MOSAIC VIRUS IN CUCUMBER GREENHOUSE CROPS IN BULGARIA

In 2015 virus-like symptoms such as severe mosaic, mottling, leaf deformation and fruit discoloration were observed in different hybrids in greenhouse cucumber crops in the areas of Simitly, Petrich, Harmanly and Parvomay of Bulgaria. The disease incidence in the greenhouses ranged from 70 to 80% and as a result of unmarketable fruits produced the yield losses were very high. These symptoms were also observed in the following years. In order to identify the etiological agent of the observed disease, 5 leaf samples were collected from each greenhouse (totally 20 samples) and tested serologically by using polyclonal antibodies for the presence of CMV, ZYMV, PRSV, WMV and Cucumber green mottle mosaic virus (CGMMV). Only CGMMV was detected in all the symptomatic cucumber samples tested. To further verify the presence of CGMMV the same samples were also tested by RT-PCR by using the primer pair “CGMMV sense/CGMMV antisense” (Boubourakas et al., 2004), which amplifies a product of approximately 332 bp. Also, two isolates, one from 2015 and another from 2018, were chosen for further sequence characterization and results indicated that the obtained sequences showed 99% nucleotide identity with pXT1 isolate (KY753929) from China. To our knowledge this is the first report of CGMMV in Bulgaria.