We report the characterization of the coat protein gene of a Brazilian isolate of Grapevine virus A (GVA-SP). Total RNA was extracted from leaves and petioles of GVA infected plants of the grape (Vitis spp.) variety 'Kober 5BB' and subjected to RT-PCR using primers designed to amplify a fragment between positions 6409 and 7175 of the GVA RNA (GenBank Accession X75433). A fragment of the expected size (767 nt) was obtained which included the coat protein gene coding for 198 amino acids. The GVA-SP sequence displayed nucleotide and amino acid similarity of, respectively, 86-92.3% and 94.5-98% with GVA isolates from Europe, Africa and Japan (Accessions X75433, AF441234, AF007415, AB039841) and Southern Brazil (Accession AF494187). The highest identity, however, was with the African and Italian isolates.
