NATURAL INFECTION OF WILD AND CULTIVATED PEARS WITH APPLE SCAR SKIN VIROID IN GREECE

Apple scar skin viroid (ASSVd) was found in naturally infected wild (Pyrus amygdaliformis) and cultivated pear (Pyrus communis) in Greece using dot-blot hybridization analysis and RT-PCR assays.
Scar skin disease, originally observed in a severely damaged commercial pear orchard, was later found widespread in cultivated and wild pear in northern Peloponnesus, Greece.
Of 50 fruit, leaf or bark samples from diseased plants, 30% hybridized with ASSVd cRNA probe.
The presence of ASSVd in wild pear on the mountains, away from any human interference, suggests that the viroid is native to Greece.
Thus, Greece, in the Mediterranean region, is a second center of origin of ASSVd to northeast Asia in China and Japan.
ASSVd may have co-existed with wild pear in Greece for centuries or millennia.
This species has been the traditional rootstock of pear and apple in Greece, and pear infection has obviously been taking place by grafting on infected rootstock, or using infected budwood.
The broad occurrence of the viroid in wild pear trees away from human interference suggests the existence of some natural means of transmission of ASSVd.

XVII International Symposium Virus and Virus-Like Diseases of Temperate Fruit Crops

P.E. Kyriakopoulou, A. Hadidi

apple scar skin viroid, ASSVd, pear, wild pear, Pyrus amygdaliformis, geographic origin

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.1998.472.82