Reassortant strains of infectious bursal disease virus (IBDV) belonging to genogroup A3B1 predominate in British broiler chicken flocks

Abstract

As part of ongoing epidemiological surveillance for infectious bursal disease virus (IBDV), the hypervariable region (HVR) of the VP2 capsid gene encoded by segment A, and a region of the VP1 polymerase gene, encoded by segment B, were sequenced from 20 IBDV-positive bursal samples obtained in 2020 and 2021, from 16 commercial British broiler farms. Of the 16 farms, none contained very virulent (vv) strains belonging to genogroup A3B2, but 5/16 (31%) contained strains of genogroup A3B1, demonstrating birds were infected with reassortant strains containing a vv segment A and a non-vv segment B. In addition, 3/16 (19%) farms contained vaccine or classical strains belonging to genogroup A1B1, and 8/16 (50%) were co-infected with both genogroup A1B1 and A3B1 strains. Therefore, a total of 13/16 (81%) of the farms contained genogroup A3B1 reassortant viruses, the majority of which 8/13 (62%)) were found to be co-infected with genogroup A1B1 strains. Moreover, of the flocks containing reassortant strains, 5/13 (38%) had HVR mutations Q219L, G254D, D279N, and N280T, consistent with a recently described Western European clade, but 8/13 had other mutations or no mutations, demonstrating that multiple clades were present in the samples. Taken together, vv strains were not detected in the British broiler flocks we sampled, whereas reassortant strains predominated, which belonged to different clades, and were frequently found in samples that were also infected with genogroup A1B1 strains.