Prevalence of Betanodavirus in Sea Bass (Dicentrarchus Labrax) for All Production Stages in Turkey
Abstract Viral Nervous Necrosis (VNN) is one of the most important problems in sea bass aquaculture. Although there are many studies in the world on detection and molecular characterization of betanodaviruses causative agent of VNN, there are not enough studies related to prevalance to provide epidemiological maps. The purpose of this study was to investigate the betanodavirus prevalence in all bass hatcheries actively operating and in some farms in Turkey by RT-qPCR. A total of 2460 samples including fertilized egg, prelarva, postlarva, and fingerling were collected from 16 hatcheries as covering all production stages. A total of 600 sea bass were also collected from 20 farms. Betanodavirus was detected in a hatchery and a farm in fingerling sized sea bass and prevalances were found to be 6.25% and 5%, respectively. Virus isolation initially could not be achieved in E-11 but later SSN-1. Partial genome analysis of both RNA1 and RNA2 segments of the viruses, revealed that they were Redspotted grouper nervous necrosis virus genotype endemic in the Mediterranean basin. The absence of mortality related to VNN in the hatchery and farm, the healthy appearance of the sea bass, the low viral load detected and also output of retrospective epidemiological studies indicate that the infection is subclinical. Not detecting betanodavirus in other age groups where biosafety is implemented indicates that there is no active infection. In the light of these findings, it can be concluded that there are no circulating betanodavirus in hatcheries and the detected virus could be of sea-water origin.