A strain of apple mosaic virus was isolated from hop plants in Japan. The virus was purified from young hop plants and back-inoculated to virus-free hop plants obtained by meristem tip culture. Inoculated plants developed chlorotic spots, ringspots and a band pattern accompanied by necrosis in the inoculated and systemically infected leaves. Shoot tips of infected plants sometimes became necrotic and these symptoms resembled those of a ring-and band-pattern mosaiclike disease prevalent in hop gardens in Japan. Since apple mosaic virus was recovered from infected plants, it is likely that the virus was the causal agent of this disease.Agar gel double diffusion tests and ELISA showed the hop virus to be serologically closely related to apple mosaic virus (ApMV), and distantly related to prunus necrotic ringspot virus (PNRSV).The virus had a narrow host range, and infected only cucumber of 18 species of Cucurbitaceae, Chenopodiaceae, Leguminosae or Solanaceae inoculated. It produced chlorotic spots on the inoculated cotyledons of cucumber, but no systemic infection. By contrast, ApMV from apple and PNRSV from peach had wide host ranges and infected cucumber plants systemically.ApMV from hop in Japan 31 1
A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T SWe are grateful to Dr D. J. Barbara (East Malling Research Station) for supplying antisera to RV-3 and chestnut mosaic virus, to Dr K. Sawamura (Hirosaki University) for collecting apple petals infected with ApMV, to Dr N. Ochiai (Fukushima Prefectural Agriculture Experimental Station) for collecting peach petals infected with PNRSV and to Drs A. N. Adams and J. M. Thresh (East Malling Research Station) for heipfui comments on the manuscript.