Evidence of Vertical Transmission of Vitis cryptic virus in Grapevine

In this study, we demonstrate that Vitis cryptic virus (VCV), one of the many viruses that infect grapevines, is transmitted by both gametes. Regardless of the infected parent being used as the male or female virus source in crosses, VCV was detected in all eight interspecific progenies tested. Interestingly, except for a single mutation, all VCV sequences obtained from the different hybrids display 100% identity to either RNA1 or RNA2 in the parental vines. In addition, we confirmed a close relationship between the virus and wild Vitis species from Asia or the Americas, where the virus has been originally characterized and reported by transcriptomic datamining. Following a phylogenetic analysis, we identified clustering of sequences underlining a potential co-evolution pattern between some VCV genotypes and specific Vitis subspecies.