BLUEBERRY LEAF MOTTLE, A NEW DISEASE OF HIGHBUSH BLUEBERRY

A virus was transmitted to Chenopodium quinoa and C. amaranticolor from young leaves of mature highbush blueberry plants Vaccinium corymbosum cv.
Rubel in Michigan, U.S.A., exhibiting symptoms of an undescribed disease, with dieback of stems, pronounced mottling and malformation of leaves.
Symptoms in C. quinoa were chlorotic local lesions, systemic mottling and death of terminal growth; in C. amaranticolor, only mottling of terminal growth was evident.
Other herbaceous hosts when rub-inoculated showed mild or no symptoms.
Virus purified from infected C. quinoa sedimented as top (T), middle (M) and bottom (B) components, with sedimentation coefficients of 53, 120, and 128 S, respectively, suggesting that a nepovirus was the causal agent.
The high S-value of the M component indicated possible relationship to tomato ringspot (TomRSV) or grapevine Bulgarian latent (GBLV) viruses.
In agar gel diffusion tests, no serological relationship was detected between the blueberry virus and TomRSV, but the virus was distantly related to GBLV. Five of seventy cv.
Rubel blueberry seedlings inoculated with purified BBLMV proved to be infected after back inoculation to C. quinoa.

II International Symposium on Small Fruit Virus Diseases

D.C. Ramsdell, R. Stace-Smith

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.1980.95.4