First Report of Tobacco Streak Virus in <i>Cannabis sativa</i> in New York

In 2022, virus-like symptoms were observed in a field of diverse hemp (Cannabis sativa L.) germplasm in Ontario County, New York. Less than 1% of plants exhibited stunting and curled leaves (Figure S1), consistent with tobacco streak virus (TSV) symptoms on other plants (Liu et al. 2022). Most typically, the plants were considerably reduced in overall size, with upwards, adaxial curling along the leaf margin with newer leaves appearing to be the most affected. Fifteen symptomatic plants representing nine accessions were tested for 12 viruses and viroids through Agdia Testing Services (Elkhart, IN). Of these, eight plants representing five accessions including: G 33204 21UO SD ('Cherry Wine S1'), G 33211 21UO SD ('Wife'), G 33225 22CL01 CL ('Candida #2'), G 33270 22UO SD ('Falkowski CBD Mix'), and G 33365 22UO SD ('Queen Dream'), were positive for TSV, a type of Ilarvirus in the Bromoviridae family. Presence of TSV was confirmed through enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay testing. TSV is a positive-sense, single-stranded RNA virus with a wide host range that can be transmitted by thrips, mechanical injury, seed, and pollen (Zambrana-Echevarría et al. 2021). To confirm the presence of TSV, two putatively TSV-infected samples were subjected to RNA-Seq analysis. RNA was extracted using the RNeasy Plant Mini Kit (Qiagen, Aarhus, Denmark) per manufacturer's direction. Stranded RNA libraries were prepared using the Illumina TruSeq Stranded Total RNA with Ribo-Zero Plant kit (San Diego, California, USA). Paired-end 2x150bp sequencing was performed on an Illumina NovaSeq6000 sequencer. RNA-Seq data was trimmed using the fastp program (Chen et al. 2018) with default parameters to remove adapter sequences and low-quality bases. After filtering, 49,696,041 and 56,126,804 paired-end reads were retained from 'Wife' and 'Falkowski CBD Mix' samples, respectively. Filtered RNA-seq reads were mapped to TSV genome accession GCF_000865505.1 using the bowtie2 (Langmead & Salzberg 2012) aligner with default parameters. From 'Wife' and 'Falkowski CBD Mix' samples, 153 and 139 reads mapped to the TSV reference genome. To further validate the presence of TSV reads, RNA-Seq data was analyzed using the Kraken2 pipeline (Wood et al. 2019). Using the Kraken2 virus database, reads associated with TSV (NCBI taxonomy ID: 12317) were identified. This analysis identified 172 and 151 TSV reads from 'Wife' and 'Falkowski CBD Mix,' respectively. Higher numbers of reads identified using the Kraken2 analysis is due to the more permissive k-mer matching approach implemented in Kraken2. Furthermore, we identified several other virus taxa in the samples. Of note, both samples had a high number of reads associated with Amazon lily mild mottle virus with 254,493 and 116,150 reads from 'Wife' and 'Falkowski CBD Mix,' respectively. Among other virus species belonging to Ilarviruses, Cassava Ivorian bacilliform virus and Cowpea chlorotic mottle viruses were detected from both samples. To further validate infection by TSV, samples from both ELISA-positive and ELISA-negative plants were subjected to PCR using the primers and protocol described in Zambrana-Echevarría et al. 2021. Amplification of an approximately 700 base-pair product was observed in the putatively ELISA-positive samples, but not in the ELISA-negative samples. The amplicons were further cloned into the pGEM-T Easy vector (Promega, Madison, WI, U.S.A) using the manufacturer's protocol and sequenced using M13 forward and M13 reverse primers (Functional Biosciences, Madison, WI, U.S.A). Sequencing results indicated considerable similarity to TSV genomes available in GenBank, between 88% and 99%. Raw sequence data generated from this study was deposited in NCBI under the bioproject ID PRJNA1009441. Though it cannot be ruled out that the observed symptoms were caused exclusively by TSV infection due to the high number of other viral reads, the results contribute to the literature that indicates hemp can host TSV and should be considered a potential source of TSV inoculum (Chiginsky et al. 2021). This new inoculum source could cause significant crop damage and economic loss when grown with TSV susceptible row and specialty crops.

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