First quantitative detection of tomato brown rugose fruit virus in wastewater in Louisiana

Samendra P Sherchan; Bikash Malla; Eiji Haramoto

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.164001

First quantitative detection of tomato brown rugose fruit virus in wastewater in Louisiana

Sci Total Environ. 2023 Aug 25:888:164001. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.164001. Epub 2023 May 9.

Authors

Samendra P Sherchan¹, Bikash Malla², Eiji Haramoto³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Environmental Health, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA 70112, United States; BioEnvironmental Science Program, Morgan State University, Baltimore, MD 21251, United States; Interdisciplinary Center for River Basin Environment, University of Yamanashi, 4-3-11 Takeda, Kofu, Yamanashi 400-8511, Japan. Electronic address: sshercha@tulane.edu.
² Interdisciplinary Center for River Basin Environment, University of Yamanashi, 4-3-11 Takeda, Kofu, Yamanashi 400-8511, Japan.
³ Interdisciplinary Center for River Basin Environment, University of Yamanashi, 4-3-11 Takeda, Kofu, Yamanashi 400-8511, Japan. Electronic address: eharamoto@yamanashi.ac.jp.

PMID: 37169194
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.164001

Abstract

We investigated the occurrence of tomato brown rugose fruit virus (ToBRFV) at a conventional wastewater treatment plant in Louisiana over a 13-month period, from March 2017 to March 2018. Influent, secondary effluent, and final effluent wastewater samples were collected monthly, and viruses were concentrated by the adsorption-elution method using an electronegative filter, followed by the detection using quantitative polymerase chain reaction. ToBRFV was detected in 10 (77 %) of 13 influent samples, 9 (69 %) of 13 in secondary effluent, and 6 (50 %) of 12 final effluents. The concentrations of ToBRFV in the influent samples ranged from 3.5 to 6.1 log₁₀ copies/L and it was always higher than those in secondary or final effluents. Wastewater samples showed a high positive ratio of ToBRFV during fall and winter months. The findings highlight that routine monitoring of new viral indicator such as ToBRFV is necessary to understand its environmental distribution and correlation with pathogenic viruses. This is the first study providing quantitative data on the occurrence of ToBRFV in wastewater.

Keywords: Tomato brown rugose fruit virus; Viral indicator; Wastewater; qPCR.

MeSH terms

Fruit
Louisiana
Solanum lycopersicum*
Viruses*
Wastewater

Substances

Wastewater