The mountain papaya may be a possible reservoir of the Kashmir bee virus

The Kashmir bee virus (KBV) infects many species of Hymenoptera, including bees, wasps, and other pollinators, potentially contributing to honeybee population declines. KBV can cause death of bees. KBV can infect through both vertical transmission (from queen to larvae and vice versa) and horizontal transmission (via food contamination). Plants pollinated by bees may be a source of horizontal transmission, through fecal contamination of pollen and flowers by infected pollinators, both intra- and interspecifically. Pollinated plants constitute a source of KBV intra- and inter-species horizontal transmission, particularly by the contamination of pollen and flowers by feces of KBV-infected pollinators.

We test for the presence of KBV sequences in the transcriptomes of Vasconcellea pubescens, a commercially valuable plant species known as mountain papaya. We mapped transcriptomes from fruit, leaves, and root tissues to the KBV reference genome with 91% coverage, from which we produced a consensus sequence denominated Kashmir bee virus ch. phylogenetic analysis revealed that KBV-Ch shares 97% nucleotide identity with the reference genome, and groups with other KBV strains isolated from Spain, Chile and New Zealand.