Tomato brown rugose fruit virus (ToBRFV) is a recently identified, highly contagious, and destructive Tobamovirus that primarily infects tomatoes. To investigate the presence of this virus, forty leaf samples were collected from plants exhibiting viral symptoms such as mosaic, leaf malformation, and blistering from the tomato greenhouses in
Lorestan Province in ۲۰۲۴. Mechanical inoculation on Nicotiana benthamiana and Solanum lycopersicum was done, and symptoms appeared as a systemic mosaic on N. benthamiana seven days post-inoculation (dpi), while tomato plants exhibited mosaic, blistering, severe deformation, and shoestring-like symptoms, particularly in apical leaves, by ۱۰dpi. Then, an RT-PCR assay was operated on the samples, and a ۶۲۳-base pair fragment was successfully amplified utilizing ToBRFV-specific primers corresponding to the coat protein gene region. Sequence BLAST analysis confirmed that the
Lorestan isolates exhibited a nucleotide sequence identity ranging from ۹۹.۳۲% to ۹۹.۸۳%, as did other isolates in GenBank. The phylogenetic tree generated using MEGA۱۱ software indicated that
ToBRFV isolates clustered into two distinct groups, with the isolates from
Lorestan province classified as group II. Within group II, two
Lorestan isolates clustered alongside three other Iranian isolates. The length of the branches in this group suggests that mutations are present in these isolates compared to group I. Isolates from other countries were classified into a distinct subgroup within the group I. The two-by-two comparison of nucleotide sequences using SDT v۱.۲ software demonstrated the
Lorestan isolates exhibited the highest genetic similarity to the Iranian isolates ZAR-K-۲۰ and Zar-Kp, with identities ranging from ۹۹.۳۰% to ۹۹.۵۰%. In contrast, the
Lorestan isolates demonstrated the greatest genetic distance from the Peru isolate, which had an identity of ۹۸.۸۰%. This report represents the first documented
ToBRFV detection instance in
Lorestan Province tomato greenhouses.
