Abstract
Ustilaginoidea virens is the causal agent of a serious disease of rice. Here, we report the presence of five dsRNA bands ranging from about 1.2, 1.5, 1.7, and 1.8 to 5.6 kb in an isolate of this fungus from China and the complete sequence of the largest dsRNA segment, putatively representing the genome of a novel virus, designated as Ustilaginoidea virens RNA virus 1 (UvRV1), UvRV1, which has a genome length of 5567 bp and has two consecutive open reading frames (ORFs) with a five-nucleotide overlap. Phylogenetic analysis showed that UvRV1 belongs to the genus of Victorivirus in the family Totiviridae.