Occurrence of Tomato brown rugose fruit virus Infecting Tomato Crops in Mexico

In 2017 circumstantial evidence of a new virus disease rapidly spreading mechanically in tomato crops in Baja California Sur was reported. In July 2018 plants in protected greenhouse from Ensenada, Baja California carrying the Tm-2 and Tm-22 resistance genes effective against ToMV showed severe mosaic, blistering and leaf distortion. In order to identify the putative Tobamovirus related to the observed disease, total RNA was extracted from leaves or fruits of six symptomatic plants (LV-2018M1 to LV-2018M6), using TRIzol Reagent (ThermoFisher, CA, USA) following manufacturer’s instructions. Reverse transcription (RT) and PCR amplification was performed as previously described (Luria et al. 2017). For RT reaction, total RNA from infected plants served as template using M-MLV Reverse Transcriptase (ThermoFisher) and the primer R-4718 as RT primer. The resulting cDNA was amplified by PCR using Taq DNA polymerase (ThermoFisher) and general tobamovirus Solanaceuos-infecting group primer set F-3666 and R-4718. T...