Our present understanding of the antigenic variation of APVs has been based on a limited number of virus isolates in assays that includes complement-fixation, passive hemagglutination, agar-gel precipitation, immunoperoxidase, virus neutralisation and immunofluorescence [48, 49, 65] . In addition to the immunological assays, variation of APVs has also been addressed through genetic assays, such as restriction enzyme analysis. Genomes of FWPV and quailpox virus isolates were compared by using BamHI, EcoRI, and HindIII endonucleases and distinct fragment patterns were observed between the isolates. The patterns of three quailpox virus isolates were similar to each other with a high proportion of comigrating fragments. However, when immunogenic proteins of three FWPVs, two quailpox viruses, a juncopox virus, and a pigeonpox virus isolates were examined by immunoblotting, shared as well as unique antigens were detected. The greatest disparity was observed between quailpox virus and FWPV [48, 49] , indicating extensive variation between the quailpox virus and FWPV, which would predict differences in immunogenicity and antigenicity, including neutralization sensitivity. Nucleotide sequence based studies for rapid identification of poxvirus species by PCR with specific primers and hybridisation are well established [21] . These approaches have concentrated on single genes or portions of genes that exhibits variations in their sequence and are important for quick analysis of genetic variability [22] .