Sequence analysis shows that a dwarfing disease on rice, wheat and maize in China is caused by rice black-streaked dwarf virus

Isolates of plant reoviruses causing severe stunting and dark leaf symptoms on wheat in Hebei province, on maize in Hubei province and on rice in Zhej iang province, China have been characterized. Four of the ten genome segmen ts corresponding to Rice black-streaked dwarf virus (RBSDV) S7, S8, S9, S10 were amplified by RT-PCR from the Hebei and Zhejiang isolates and sequence d. Sequences of S9 and S10 were also obtained from the Hubei isolate. Seque nces of corresponding segments of the Chinese isolates were very similar to each other (94.0-99.0% identical nucleotides and 96.3-100% identical amino acids) and were closer to those of a previously reported Japanese RBSDV is olate (90.0-94.9% identical nucleotides and 91.1-98.6% identical amino acid s) than to those of an Italian Maize rough dwarf virus isolate (85.1-88.1% identical nucleotides and 85.5-94.3% identical amino acids). The Chinese is olates should be classified as RBSDV.