Yam is an important food staple in many Pacific Island countries, but its production is limited by several factors including virus infection. The presence of viruses also hinders the exploitation of the crop by restricting the international dissemination of yam germplasm due to quarantine concerns. In this study, a total of 224 yam accessions present in the Pacific germplasm collection at SPC‐CePaCT, Fiji, were tested for the presence of badnaviruses using a combination of rolling circle amplification (RCA) and sequencing. Of these, 35 tested positive for either Dioscorea bacilliform AL virus (DBALV) or Dioscorea bacilliform AL virus 2 (DBALV2). DBALV was only detected in samples from Vanuatu and Tonga, while DBALV2 was restricted to Papua New Guinean samples. Ten complete genome sequences of DBALV and DBALV2 were obtained and pairwise comparison of the partial reverse transcriptase/ribonuclease H (RT/RNase H)‐coding sequence revealed identities ranging from 89% to 100% and 92% to 100%, respectively. The results suggest that DBALV and DBALV2 are the prevalent badnavirus species infecting yams in the Pacific region.

中文翻译：

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太平洋山药种质资源中存在的薯os杆菌病毒的特征和遗传多样性

在许多太平洋岛国中，山药是重要的主食，但其产量受到包括病毒感染在内的多种因素的限制。由于检疫问题，病毒的存在还限制了山药种质的国际传播，也阻碍了作物的开发。在这项研究中，结合滚环扩增（RCA）和测序，检测了斐济SPC-CePaCT太平洋种质库中总共存在的224株山药，并检测了巴达那病毒的存在。其中，有35种检测结果为薯Di杆菌AL病毒（DBALV）或薯os杆菌AL病毒2（DBALV2）阳性。仅在瓦努阿图和汤加的样品中检测到DBALV，而DBALV2仅限于巴布亚新几内亚样品。获得了10个完整的DBALV和DBALV2基因组序列，并且部分逆转录酶/核糖核酸酶H（RT / RNase H）编码序列的成对比较显示，其同一性分别为89％至100％和92％至100％。结果表明，DBALV和DBALV2是在太平洋地区感染山药的流行细菌。