Diagnosis of the first psittacine beak and feather disease in the mainland of China and sequence analysis of viral C1 gene

ZHUANG Qing-ye1,2,JIANG Wen-ming2,CHEN Ji-ming2,HOU Guang-yu2,LI Jin-ping2,LIU Shuo2,CHEN Jie2,HUANG Bao-xu2,HAN Xian-jie1 (1.College of Animal Science and Veterinary Medicine,Qingdao Agricultural University,Qingdao 266109,China;2.China Animal Health and Epidemiology Center,Qingdao 266032,China)

Psittacine beak and feather disease(PBFD);Melopsittacus undulates;diagnosis;C1 gene

At the end of July in 2008,an acute disease occurred in Melopsittacus undulatus in Qingdao,China.Clinical symptoms generally progressed to weight loss,feather dystrophy and loss and,in some severe cases,deformities of the beak and claws,and thymus damage.The diseased animals from two farms were detected for psittacine beak and feather disease virus(PBFDV) by PCR.Furthermore,the C1 gene was sequenced and analyzed.The result showed that two of the four samples were PBFDV positive.The C1 gene sequence was from 82% to 93% identical to the published nucleotide sequences of PBFDV in GenBank.Phylogenetic tree analysis showed that QD-CN 08 strain had relatively close genetic relationship with Japan′s PBFDV strains.Combined with clinical symptoms,epidemiological characteristics and laboratory diagnosis,the outbreak of psittacine beak and feather disease was confirmed.This disease is first reported in mainland of china.