Search

Banana is the major fruit crop produced in Ethiopia. Since Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) is one of the most devastating plant viruses infecting banana, the present study was un- dertaken to survey and identify CMV strains infecting banana plants in Ethiopia. Dot immune-binding assay (DIBA) and reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) revealed the presence of CMV in all of the symptomatic samples tested. The results of sequence and phylogenetic analysis revealed that the isolate under study was a CMV isolate from the IB subgroup. Multiple sequence alignment revealed a three nu- cleotide sequence variation that could be used to distinguish CMV subgroups. Selection pressure analysis showed the CMV-RNA1 region undergoing positive selection pressure. Tajima`s test of neutrality revealed a positive value of 0.86468 indicating CMV population contraction. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report and molecular characteri- zation of CMV IB subgroup isolate infecting banana plants in Ethiopia.