A Survey of Potato Virus Y Strains in Estonian Seed Potatoes

Potato virus Y (PVY) is the most economically significant virus affecting potato crops worldwide. In the current study, we performed three surveys using multiplex reverse transcriptase PCR (RT-PCR) to analyze PVY strain compositions in Estonian seed potatoes collected for seed certification. Altogether, 1,041 samples of PVY were analyzed: 715 from the first survey (2011 to 2013), 128 from the second survey (2016 to 2018), and 198 from the third survey (2020 to 2022). The results indicated that recombinant strains PVY NTN and PVY N-Wi are dominant, whereas identification of several circulating strain variants was inconclusive with the chosen primers. Linear regression analysis showed that there was a statistically significant ( P = 0.00334*) negative trend for PVY NTN . High-throughput sequencing revealed that assembled genome sequences represented either PVY NTNa or PVY N-Wi . Notably, the data analysis suggested that the presence and spread of specific PVY strains varied depending on the potato variety. Knowledge of PVY epidemiology trends and variety responses to PVY strains is valuable for growers, inspectors, and future breeding programs. This was the first survey of PVY strains in Estonia and in the region of the Baltic states. [Formula: see text] Copyright © 2026 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license .