Browsing by Author "Luoto, Annika"

Legume cultivation is of growing interest in Finland, but legume viruses have been mapped and studied relatively little in our country. The changing climate also creates new types of threats to legume production. Studies around the world provide an opportunity to assume that there are still undetected virus species and genera around Finnish legume production that pose a potential threat to legume production in Finland now and in the future. The aim of this study was to map the viruses present in Finnish legumes. Detected legume viruses from wild plants were characterized by deep sequencing and test plants were inoculated for virus detection. In addition, viruses from experimentally cultivated pea samples as well as faba bean, pea and fodder galega samples collected from Helsinki area were studied by deep sequencing. Soybean dwarf virus (SbDV) was detected in a wild plant sample by deep sequencing. The aim was to ensure the first occurrence of SbDV in Finland by PCR and sequencing. Another aim was to sequence the genome of a possible novel closterovirus detected in a wild plant sample. To identify the closterovirus genome, we utilized the deep sequenced information and designed PCR primers tailored to the virus. To detect closterovirus infectivity, pea and soybean samples were experimentally cultured and inoculated with the closterovirus using the original plant sample. The SbDV detected in deep sequencing and possible novel closterovirus allowed the hypothesis that there are viruses present in Finnish legumes that had not been previously detected or studied.