Banana plants from Williams' (AAA, Cavendish subgroup) banana (Musa acuminate)
variety and from Pradica (AAB group) banana (Musa × paradisiaca) variety,
collected from different locations in Egypt, were tested for the presence of Banana
streak virus (BSV) using immunocapture-polymerase chain reaction (IC-PCR) and a
specific antiserum for BSV. IC-PCR indicated the episomal presence of BSV in
Williams and Pradica banana varieties. In addition, IC-PCR analysis on vitroplants
collected from tissue cultures (TC) showed the significant role of TC in spreading out
of BSV. PCR amplicons for the reverse transcriptase and RNaseH motifs of ORF III
for four BSV isolates were cloned, sequenced and submitted to GenBank. The four
accessions showed nucleotide-pairwise identity between 76-82% and amino acid
similarity between 29-63% indicating high diversity. In addition, the four BSV
isolates showed nucleotide identity between 64-88% with four BSV accessions,
retrieved from the GenBank. Phylogenetic analysis based on the partial RT/RNaseHsequence
showed that the four Egyptian BSV isolates clustered together with two
Egyptian sugarcane bacilliform badnavirus apart from other badnaviruses
circumventing several viruses of BSV.