ISHS Acta Horticulturae 386: XVI International Symposium on Fruit Tree Virus diseases
A VIRUS AFFECTING APPLES AND PEARS IS RELATED TO GRAPEVINE VIRUS A AS REVEALED BY IC-RT-PCR AND MOLECULAR HYBRIDIZATION |
| Authors: | A. Hadidi, I. Davis, J.D. Postman, A. Minafra, D. Boscia |
| Abstract:
Commercial apple and pear cultivars are known to be infected by latent viruses which produce slight or no visible symptoms as well as viruses that cause conspicuous leaf symptoms and/or fruit blemishing. Latent viruses are responsible for a high percentage of the overall loss of production in pome fruits because they are much more prevalent than other viruses. These viruses may include apple chlorotic leaf spot, apple stem grooving, and apple stem pitting and possibly other undescribed latent viruses. Some apple viruses may infect only pome fruits, others may infect other hosts such as stone fruits or grapevines. Recently, we have shown the successful detection of grapevine virus A (GVA) from infected herbaceous and grapevine tissues and viruliferous mealybugs using reverse transcription -polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) technology (Minafra et al., 1992; Minafra and Hadidi, 1994). GVA is a phloem-limited filamentous virus that has been associated with Kober stem grooving of grapevines (Conti et al., 1980; Garau et al., 1993). In this paper, we report the utilization of DNA primers and GVA polyclonal antisera in immunocapture (IC) RT-PCR assays for the detection of GVA-related virus from infected apple and pear tissues. The amplified viral cDNA hybridized to GVA cRNA probe. This virus does not cause symptoms on infected pome fruit tissues and it is associated with the latent viruses apple stem pitting and pear vein yellows. | |
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