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POSTERS: Pathogen detection, quantification and diagnosis

Ficus carica plants displaying severe viral-like symptoms harbor a complex virome
Adriana Larrea-Sarmiento - University of Hawaii at Manoa. Michael Melzer- University of Hawaii at Manoa, John Hu- University of Hawaii at Manoa, Alexandra Kong- University of Hawaii at Manoa, Xupeng Wang- University of Hawaii at Manoa, Alejandro Olmedo-Velarde- University of Hawaii at Manoa

In 2009, edible fig plants (Ficus carica) displaying severe mosaic, mottling, and leaf distortion symptoms were reported from a nursery on Kauai, Hawaii. To determine if viral-like agents were present in these plants, double-stranded (ds)RNAs were extracted from root tissue. The extracted dsRNAs ranged from 1 to 20 kb and were used to generate a randomly-primed cDNA library that underwent high throughput sequencing (HTS) using a 454 GS FLX Titanium platform. About 263k reads (134 Mb) mostly between 400 and 600 nt in length were generated. After quality control, trimming and de novo assembly, 1183 contiguous sequences (contigs) were assembled. BLASTX/BLASTN comparisons to existing databases revealed these contigs were most similar to fig mild mottle-associated virus, fig leaf mottle-associated viruses 1-3, citrus yellow vein-associated virus, fig latent virus 1, fig badnavirus 1, grapevine badnavirus 1, fig mosaic emaravirus, and members of the genera Endornavirus, Partitivirus and Totivirus. Additionally, some contigs shared sequence homology to citrus exocortis viroid and a putatively novel viroid most similar to avsunviroids. Testing is currently underway to determine whether the viruses and viroids identified by HTS can be detected using PCR-based assays in edible and ornamental ficus plants growing in Hawaii.