Abstract: Recently，a new virus that infected kiwifruit，Actinidia virus 1（AcV-1），has been reported in New Zealand. In order to determine the occurrence and molecular characterization of AcV-1 in kiwifruit cultivars（‘Hongyang’and‘Jinguo’）in Sichuan Province，90 kiwifruit leaves samples of suspected viral infection were tested for AcV-1 by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction（RT-PCR）. The results showed that 22 samples were positive to AcV-1，and the infection rate was 24.4%. The coat protein gene（CP）sequences of the obtained five AcV-1 isolates were compared with isolate K75 which was reported in New Zealand. Results showed that the sequences identities of CP nucleotides and amino acid among these isolates were 84.8%–97.1% and 89.7%–99.6%，respectively. Among them，the sequence identities of CP nucleotides were less than 91% between New Zealand isolate K75 and four of these isolates except Qionglai isolate HYH5，which was 97.1%. Phylogenetic analysis based on CP gene of each isolate showed that these isolates were mainly clustered into three branches，HYH5 and New Zealand isolate K75 were located in the same branch，and the other isolates were located in the other two branches.

Key words: kiwifruit, Actinidia virus 1, RT-PCR, CP gene, molecular characterization