The monitoring of plum pox virus in Bursa, Bilecik, and Bolu provinces of Turkey refined MIs status as a variant of strain M

A total of 486 symptomatic and asymptomatic peach leaf samples were collected from Bursa, Bilecik, and Bolu provinces and tested for plum pox virus (PPV, Potyvirus) in response to recent reports on the new divergent subgroup MIs in the nearby Istanbul province of Turkey. The phylogenetic analysis of newly sequenced isolates indicated that two isolates from Bolu belong to subgroup MIs, confirming the existence of its isolates beyond Istanbul. Both Bolu MIs isolates cross-reacted with a mixture of polyclonal antibodies and monoclonal 5B-IVIA in a commercial DAS-ELISA kit for universal detection of PPV strains, elucidating some of MIs serological characters. The identity percentage, and also the evolutionary distance and diversity analyses showed that M isolates shared high genetic identities among them, and that the diversity among its subgroups was also low. Therefore, the results showed that MIs is not a new distinct strain but a variant of strain M. Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/03235408.2022.2052523 .