Section outline
-
The use of tested virus-free plant material is highly recommended when following the demand of planting healthy trees. This is even more important in urban ecosystems, where trees grow under adverse environmental conditions that can significantly impact their health (Bandte et al., 2022). Other viruses have also been reported to infect Acer spp. (Büttner et al. 2023) and induce virus-like symptoms on leaves, reliable diagnosis of MaMaV should be done by molecular means. Especially in the case of the partial genomes of the recently identified novel emaraviruses (MEV-2, MEV-3) related to MaMaV in mosaic-diseased maple trees, virus-specific RT-PCR from symptomatic leaf material should be applied in combination with sequencing, to discriminate between different species or strains by these emaraviruses.