Newcastle disease (ND) is a highly contagious viral disease and is a continuous threat to the poultry
industry worldwide. In the early months of 2014, several devastating ND outbreaks affecting broilers
had been occurred in Sharqia province, Egypt. The fusion gene of the isolated Newcastle disease virus
(NDV) was partially amplified by RT-PCR, then directly sequenced. The NDV isolates were found to
have the motif 112RRQKRF117. This motif and the intracerebral pathogenicity index (ICPI) are
indicative of the velogenic nature of these NDV isolates. Phylogenetic analysis showed that the new
NDV strain belongs to the lineage 2 genotype ІІ and is closely related to the Egyptian strain
VRCLU/Giza/2009. Based on the high nucleotide similarity between our isolated NDV isolates and the
Egyptian NDV strain, the origin of these recent NDV isolates might be from Egypt