Development of a molecular assay for the detection of Cucumber mosaic virus and the discrimination of its subgroups I and II

A nucleic acid based test for the detection of the economically important plant virus Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) based on the Luminex xTAG technology was developed. This technology has the advantage of allowing the simultaneous detection of various targets. Applying this method, we prove the presence of CMV in general and differentiate between its two subgroups I and II for which significant differences concerning severity of symptoms and virulence have been reported. For the development of the test procedure the coat protein gene sequences of 29 CMV isolates were cloned, sequenced and classified into subgroups. Sequences from GenBank were used to design primers. Additionally, a subgroup specific ELISA was conducted for comparison. This work is part of a project which aims to develop a test for the simultaneous detection of various plant pathogens (viral, bacterial and fungal) in plant material.