Sequence variant of Hop Stunt Viroid(HSVd) detected from Plum trees cultivated in Korea and Phylogenetic Analysis

Hop stunt viroid(HSVd) is a plant pathogen which infect a number of hosts such as grapevine, Citrus and Prunus plants. Sequence variants of HSVd have been divided into three types(i. grapevine and hop, ii. citrus, iii. plum, peach, apricot and almond). Purified RNAs from plum trees were used for the synthesis of cDNA with reverse transcription and amplified by polymerase chain reaction. Cloned cDNAs were sequenced and two different consensus sequence variants were detected. A neighbor-joining analysis was carried out on the sequence variants together with 62 previously described variants of HSVd from hop, plum and other species. Sequence variants from plum trees cultivated in Korea were clustered in HSVd-plum subtype and not in HSVd-hop subtype which were two Korean isolates belongs. These relationship between sequence variants from plum and two Korean isolates in HSVd-hop type supports the other origin for hop stunt disease.