First record of Peach latent mosaic viroid and Hop stunt viroid in Bosnia and Herzegovina

During a survey for the evaluation of the sanitary status of the stone fruit industry of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 410 samples were collected from 33 commercial orchards and 2 nurseries, and tested for the presence of Peach latent mosaic viroid (PLMVd) and Hop stunt viroid (HSVd). Samples were from 230 plants of plum, 77 of peach, 65 of cherry, 11 of apricot, and 27 of other Prunus species (myrobalan and blackthorn) growing in the surroundings of Banja Luka, Gradacac, Sarajevo, or Mostar. All samples were tested by tissue-print hybridization (Pallás et al., 2003), by pressing the freshly cut end of a leaf petiole onto a Hybond N+ nylon membrane and hybridizing it at 55°C with SP6 and T7 RNA polymerase-generated full-length digoxygenin-labelled viroidal cRNA probes (Shamloul et al., 1995; Astruc et al., 1996). About 10% of the samples (43 of 410) were found to be infected by viroids. In particular, PLMVd was detected in 39 plants of peach, and HSVd in two of apricot and two of plum. Positive samples were from both native and imported cultivars. Interestingly, among PLMVd-infected peaches, two were seedlings. Whether the infection had come via pruning tools or via seeds remains to be established. This report is the first record of PLMVd and HSVd in Bosnia and Herzegovina.