NUCLEOTIDE SEQUENCES OF SEGMENT FIVE OF THE EGYPTIAN BANANA BUNCHY TOP BABUVIRUS

Banana and plantains (Musa sp.) are the most important staple food and source of carbohydrates in different geographical regions mainly in Africa. The productivity of banana crop is attacked by many pests and diseases. Banana bunchy top babuvirus (BBTV) is the most destructive viral disease because it has an enormous negative impact on the productivity of banana in all of bananacultivated- countries in the world. Accordingly, in this study we are focusing on the molecular characterization of the full length of the Egyptian isolate of BBTV DNA-5. The full length of BBTV DNA-5 was synthesized via polymerase chain reaction (PCR) then manipulated and cloned into pGEM-T easy vector and sequenced. The size of the full length of DNA-5 was 1017 nucleotides (nts) which includes one open reading frame (ORF) of 489 nts. The nucleotide sequences of the full length of DNA-5 of the Egyptian isolate was aligned with those of seven overseas isolates (three isolates from India, two from Taiwan and one from Hainan). Results showed that the major outcome of this alignment was restricted in two groups, the first group called Asian group that comprised Taiwan 1, Taiwan 2 and the second group contained the Egyptian, Indian 1, Indian 2, Australian and Hainan isolates that formed the South Pacific group. As a conclusion, one can recommend that a strategy of PCR detection of BBTV could be introduced as an early step for controlling such virus based on the nucleotide sequence of the Egyptian BBTV Q-DNA-5 beside the other published sequences.