First report of maize yellow mosaic virus causing maize reddening in Henan,China

A novel polerovirus maize yellow mosaic virus (MaYMV) has been discovered in Asia (Chen et al. 2016; Lim et al. 2018; Sun et al. 2019; Wang et al. 2016), East Africa (Guadie et al. 2018; Massawe et al. 2018) and South America (Gonçalves et al. 2017). MaMYV was first reported to infect maize (Zea mays L.) showing yellow mosaic symptoms on the leaves in Yunnan, Guizhou, and yellowing and dwarfing symptoms on the leaves in Anhui provinces of China in 2016 (Chen et al. 2016; Wang et al. 2016). An East African isolate of MaYMV has recently been shown to induce leaf reddening in several maize genotypes (Stewart et al. 2020). To our knowledge the leaf reddening symptoms in maize was not reported in China and MaYMV was not reported in Henan province, China. A survey of viral diseases on maize was carried out during the autumn of 2021 in Zhengzhou (Henan province), China. During the survey, the leaves showing reddening symptoms were observed on maize plants in all four fields investigated. Symptomatic leaves of 12 plants from four fields of Xingyang county, Zhengzhou (n=12) were collected and mixed for metatranscriptomics sequencing, and total RNA was extracted and subjected to an rRNA removal procedure using a Ribo-zero Magnetic kit according to the manufacturer's instructions (Epicentre, an Illumina® company). cDNA libraries were constructed using a TruSeq™ RNA sample prep kit (Illumina). Barcoded libraries were paired-end sequenced on an Illumina HiSeq X ten platform at Shanghai Biotechnology Co., Ltd. (Shanghai, China) according to the manufacturer's instructions (www.illumina.com). In total 67607392 clean reads were de novo assembled using CLC Genomics Workbench (version:6.0.4). 105796 contigs were obtained. The assembled contigs were queried by homology search tools (BLASTn and BLASTx) against public database(GenBank). One 5,457 nucleotide (nt) long contig with the most reads of 558826 was obtained and blast analysis showed it shared 99.3% nt sequence identity (99% coverage) with MaYMV Yunnan4 isolate (KU291100).. According to the sequencing data no other plant viruses except MaYMV were present in the sequencing data. To confirm the presence of this virus, twelve leaf samples showing reddening symptoms were detected by RT-PCR using specific primer pairs for CP full length open reading frame (F: ATGAATACGGGAGGTAGAAA, R: CTATTTCGGGTTTTGAACAT). Amplicons with expected size of 594 bp were gained in seven samples and three of them were cloned into pMD18T vector and sequenced. The three isolates (OM417795, OM417796, and OM417797) shared 99.16% to 99.83% nt sequence identity with MaYMV-Yunnan3 isolate (KU291100). Further P0 sequence analysis of the three samples (OM417798, OM417799, and OM417800) with primer pairs F: ATGGGGGGAGTGCCTAAAGC/R: TCATAACTGATGGAATTCCC showed they shared 99.5% to 99.62% nt sequence identity with MaYMV-Yunnan3 isolate.To our knowledge, this is the first report of the occurrence of MaYMV infecting maize in Henan, China. Besides, our finding firstly discovered reddening symptoms caused by MaYMV on maize in China which is different from the previous symptoms observed in the other three provinces of China possibly due to the different maize varieties grown in different areas. According to our investigation, maize showing reddening symptoms was common in the fields. Henan province is the main corn production area in China. Corn leaf aphid (Rhopalosiphum maidis), the insect vector of MaYMV, is an important pest of corn in Henan province, thereby the occurrence of MaYMV might cause potential threat to maize production in China.