Occurrence and diversity of apple mosaic ilarvirus in apple and hazelnut in Serbia

Two hundred and twenty trees (150 apples and 70 hazelnuts) from seven locations in Serbia were tested for the presence of Ilarvirus ApMV (apple mosaic virus). ELISA test confirmed the presence of ApMV in 11 apples (7.3%) and six hazelnuts (8.5%) samples, with typical and severe mosaic symptoms on the leaves. ELISA-positive samples were further tested by RT-PCR with two different primer pairs. One primer pair was efficient for the RT-PCR detection of ApMV isolates from apple, and the other one for isolates from hazelnut. Sequence analysis of amplified PCR fragments of the selected isolates confirmed that Serbian ApMV isolates from apple share the highest nucleotide identity (98.66 ‒ 99.02%) with isolates from India and Canada.