A variant of blueberry necrotic ring blotch virus associated with red lesions in blueberry

The complete genome of a variant of the multi-segmented (+) RNA virus blueberry necrotic ring blotch virus (BNRBV), which has not been assigned to a genus, was obtained from foliar red lesions on southern highbush blueberries grown in Alachua Co., Florida. The genome organization of this variant, BNRBV-RL, is the same as that of BNRBV: four genomic segments and seven ORFs (one ORF on each of RNA 1, RNA 2, and RNA 4 and as many as four ORFs on RNA 3). BLAST analysis revealed nucleic acid sequence identities of 89 %, 90 %, 90 % and 86 % to BNRBV RNA 1, RNA 2, RNA 3 and RNA 4, respectively. Phylogenetic analysis of the amino acid sequence of the putative RdRp domain indicated that BNRBV-RL was closely related to BNRBV and less related to citrus leprosis virus type C and three other mite-transmitted viruses. The nucleotide and amino acid sequence differences between BNRBV-RL and BNRBV combined with differences in symptom expression in blueberry would suggest that BNRBV-RL is a strain of BNRBV.