Knowledge of evolutionary history and the genetic structure of virus populations provide different levels of information about ecology and epidemiology that are important in the selection of control strategy. To study molecular evolutionary characterization and population genetic of Beet necrotic yellow vein virus isolates from Iran (BNYVV), nucleotide sequences of p25 and coat protein (CP) were determined and analyzed using phylogenetic and population genetic methods. Detection of BNYVV in Iran showed vast infection in most beet growing area that the most of isolates (92%) were A-type and the others (8%) were P-type. Our evolutionary analyzing showed that CP and p25 were highly conserved but allowed to assign isolates to three distinct groups. Different parts of p25 coding regions were under different evolutionary constraints. The most positive selection was detected at the position 68, the second amino acid of tetrad motif. Iranian isolates were found to cluster with European isolates into three distinct groups based on p25 sequences. No Iranian isolated was found to cluster with East Asian isolates except with one isolate from China. Population genetic analysis revealed low differentiation (Kt=3.97145) and diversity (πT=0.00602) with high gene flow indicating lack of phylogeographic structure between populations.

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