RESEARCH NOTE: Exploring the Competence of Various Poultry Species for Cache Valley virus Infection

Cache Valley virus (CVV) belongs to the genus Orthobunyavirus, and is known to cause severe disease in ruminants, including spontaneous abortions and congenital defects. Previous evidence suggests there is the potential of CVV to infect poultry species due to its wide geographic range, reports of seropositivity in birds for Cholul or Maguari virus (closely related viruses), and isolations of CVV from highly ornithophilic mosquito vectors. To determine CVV's potential as a disease-causing agent in poultry species, we used two strains from the two recognized genetic lineages of CVV for both our in-vivo and in-vitro studies. We assessed CVV's growth kinetics in three avian cells lines, including domestic chicken (Gallus gallus; DF-1), Japanese quail (Coturnix coturnix japonica: QNR/K2), and Pekin Duck cells (Anas platyrhynchos domesticus: PDE). For the in-vivo studies, we challenged three-day old SPF-chickens (Gallus gallus), three-day old ducklings (Anas platyrhynchos domesticus), and 14-day old quail (Coturnix coturnix) with both CVV strains. We found that CVV grew rapidly and to high titers in all three avian cell lines yet failed to induce a symptomatic infection during in-vivo studies. Our data suggests that domestic poultry species are likely not significant contributors to the maintenance of CVV. However, further studies using passerines and mosquito transmission experiments are necessary to determine if CVV has the potential to impact avian species.