First Report, Detection, and Phylogenetic Analysis of Bell Pepper Endornavirus (BPEV) Isolates Infecting Pepper in Oklahoma

Peppers are a crucial source of nutrition and supplement human diets worldwide. They are of vital importance to the agricultural and food industries, especially in developing countries where growers heavily rely on the production and export of pepper. In our recent surveys, we discovered the presence of bell pepper alphaendornavirus (BPEV) in cultivated pepper fields located in different counties of Oklahoma. The purpose of this study was to develop a diagnostic reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assay and to evaluate the genetic relationships of the complete genome of Oklahoman BPEV isolates with previously published isolates. Leaf samples from pepper plants were collected between the 2021 and 2023 growing seasons and screened for the presence of BPEV by RT-PCR using virus-specific primers. The PCR products were subsequently confirmed by Sanger sequencing. The complete genome sequence and amino acid sequences of four Oklahoma BPEV isolates were analyzed using maximum likelihood (ML) phylogeny. The resulting ML phylogeny demonstrated that the Oklahoma BPEV isolates clustered in four different groups, indicating higher variability than expected. Analysis of conserved motifs showed that an amino acid substitution in 14% of all available isolates correlated with the present phylogeny. [Formula: see text] Copyright © 2025 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license .