Comparison of RT-PCR and PCR-RFLP Molecular Techniques Used for the Differentiation of Isolates Belonging to D and M Strains of Plum Pox Virus Collected from Cluj Region

Plum pox virus (PPV) is the causal agent of sharka disease, which is responsible for severe damage and important economic losses in the stone fruit industry. The disease mainly affects stone-fruit species, mainly apricot, plum and peach . Sharka is originated from Eastern Europe and was described for the first time around 1915 in Bulgari a (Atanasoff, 1932). In this study we collected thi rty PPV isolates from one experimental orchard belonging to the Fruit Research and Development Station Cluj. Molecular strain differentiation was done with the help of RT-PCR technique by analyzing the genomic region (Cter)CP of the virus by using RFLP analysis we were able to distinguish the two major strains, D and M, based on Rsa I polymorphism located in the genomic region (Cter) CP.