Abstract
In November 1997, prairie gentian plants with necrotic yellow symptom were found in Iwate Prefecture, Japan. A spherical virus with a diameter of ca. 80nm was isolated. The virus infected 22 plant species of 11 families after mechanical inoculation. By serological tests, the virus was closely related to tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV). In RT-PCR with TSWV specific primers, a fragment of about 550bp was amplified. The fragment had a high degree of sequence homology to TSWV-RNA. Based on these results, the virus isolated from prairie gentian was identified as TSWV. This is the first report of TSWV on prairie gentian in Japan.
