Current Status of Watermelon Chlorotic Stunt Virus (WmCSV) on Some Cucurbit Plants (Cucurbitaceae) in Alahsa Region of Saudi Arabia

Cucurbit crops are widely grown and consumed in large quantities in Saudi Arabia and Middle East countries. Viral diseases are among the most limiting factors that affect the production of cucurbit crops around the world. The infection percentage of watermelon chlorotic stunt disease and molecular characterization of Saudi isolate of WmCSV are described in this study. Symptomatic leaf samples of zucchini (Cucurbita pepo), Cucumber (Cucumis sativus) and melon (Cucumis melo L) plants were tested for WmCSV and squash leaf curl virus (SLCV) infection serologically using the double antibody sandwich- enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (DAS- ELISA) test and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) using degenerate and specific overlapping primers for WmCSV to amplify 2108 nucleotides of DNA-A. The data of DAS-ELISA test showed that 69% of all tested zucchini samples were infected with WmCSV, the percentage of infection increased to 75.7% when using PCR test. All tested samples of other cucumber and melon tested negative for WmCSV while SLCV was not detected in all tested samples. The obtained sequence analysis data demonstrated that the isolated WmCSV shared high nucleotide identity 98% with other isolates of Oman. The nucleotide sequences of WmCSV obtained in this study was submitted to the GenBank (International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration) under accession number KC876038.