Molecular characterisation of IBDV isolates in Turkey revealed reassortant strains

ABSTRACT

1. Infectious bursal disease (IBD) is an acute, highly contagious viral disease of chickens caused by a virus (IBDV) which has a bi-segmented, double-stranded RNA genome. It has five viral proteins in its structure; the VP1 gene is encoded in segment B and the other four are in segment A.

2. In this study, bursae of Fabricius and spleen samples taken from chickens suspected of having clinical or subclinical IBD from a total of 50 chicken flocks located in different geographical regions of Turkey were examined.

3. The RT-PCR analysis of the VP2 gene showed that 30 of the 50 samples (60%) tested positive. Eight positive isolates were chosen and RT-PCR was performed to amplify the VP1 gene.

4. The study showed that reassortant field strains that cause clinical or subclinical disease are currently circulating in broiler flocks across Turkey.

KEYWORDS:

• Epidemiology
• IBDV
• poultry
• phylogenetic analysis
• reassortment

Acknowledgments

This article was derived from the PhD thesis of the first author entitled ‘Diagnosis of Infectious Bursal Disease Virus by Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) and its Molecular Characterisation’. This work was supported by the Ankara University Scientific Research Projects (BAP) under Grant TDK-2022-2310.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The datasets generated during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Ankara University Scientific Research Projects (BAP) [TDK-2022-2310].