Chinese rice-field eel (Monopterus albus), the family of Synbranchidae, is an economically important species in freshwater fisheries in China.The aquaculture of Chinese rice-field eel has been warmly welcome by farmers and consumers because of its nutritional value and delicious taste (Wu et al., 2016). However, alongside the rapid development of the aquaculture of this specific fish, disease problem has become a great concern during the past years, which resulted in considerable economic losses and posed a significant threat to the sustainable development of the industry (Liu et al., 2019;Ou et al., 2013;Shao et al., 2016).Chinese rice-field eels rhabdovirus (CrERV), belonging to the genus Perhabdovirus in the family Rhabdoviridae, is the causative agent of the haemorrhagic disease of Chinese rice-field eels, Monopterus albus (Liu et al., 2019). The genome size of CrERV is 11,545 bp in length which could encode five major functional proteins, namely (from 3′-5′) a nucleoprotein (N), phosphoprotein (P),