Recently, the cooperation between the Institute of Plant Protection of CAAS and the Institute for Sustainable Plant Protection of Italian National Research Council has yielded a progress in geminivirus research. Researchers identified a novel geminivirus from apple trees using next generation sequencing (NGS). The related research results have been published online in Journal of General Virology on May 1, 2015.

Geminiviruses are economically important and have caused destructive diseases in many herbaceous crops all over the world. Although more than 200 geminiviruses have been reported, only very limited geminiviruses were isolated from woody plants, especially from fruit trees. Therefore, the researchers tried to use the new technology of NGS to explore possible existence of geminiviruses in apple trees. As expected, a novel geminivirus, provisionally named as Apple geminivirus (AGV), was identified from an apple tree grown in China. AGV is a new virus with a monopartite DNA genome with size of 2932 nt. In addition, AGV is infectious in several herbaceous plants (Nicotiana bethamiana, N. glutinosa and Solanum lycopersicum). A survey on 165 apple trees grown in four Chinese provinces showed a prevalence of 7.2% for AGV, confirming its presence in several cultivars and apple production areas in China.