Evaluation of several RT-PCR primer pairs for the detection of Apple stem pitting virus.

Detection of Apple stem pitting virus (ASPV) using RT-PCR based methods was studied in infected apple and pear trees. Three virus-specific primers (ASPF1CP, ASPF2CP, ASPR3CP) were designed to target the most conservative regions of the coat protein gene of 10 virus isolates in Poland and 7 other ASPV sequences available in GenBank. The suitability of the primer pairs ASPF1CP-ASPR3CP and ASPF2CP-ASPR3CP for detection of 19 virus isolates was checked. Both new primer pairs initiated amplification of a specific product from all sources tested. From 1 to 11 isolates were not detected with the primer sets published previously. Detection of the virus in the samples collected in March, using ASPF1CP-ASPR3CP primer pair, was possible up to 512 times dilution. For the samples collected in July, virus was detected in the extracts from infected plants diluted eight times. More than 100-fold increase of sensitivity could be obtained by semi-nested PCR with primers ASPF2CP-ASPR3CP following the first round with ASPF1CP-ASPR3CP. Identification of virus isolates with different number of deletions in the coat protein gene was possible using RT-PCR with newly designed reverse primer ASPDEL in combination with the published primer ASPV7956. Besides, the comparative analysis of silicacapture-RT-PCR (SC-RT-PCR) versus immunocapture-RT-PCR (IC-RT-PCR) assays was carried out. Few ASPV isolates escaped detection by IC-RT-PCR, while all isolates tested were detected using the SC-RT-PCR with the new primers.