Disinfectants effectiveness in Tomato brown rugose fruit virus (ToBRFV) transmission in tobacco plants

Abstract

<p>The importance of the <em>Tomato brown rugose fruit virus </em>(ToBRFV) in the tomato and pepper crops in the world has created the need to investigate and test alternatives for its management. Preventive tactics are the best option to manage a viral disease, so the objective of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of sodium hypochlorite, ethyl alcohol, quaternary ammonium salts, liquid soap and milk powder dissolved in water, applied by spraying and immersion of razor blades infested with the virus and inoculating mechanically on <em>Nicotiana rustica </em>and <em>N. benthamiana </em>leaves. A completely randomized design with five repetitions was used and the experimental unit was the area of a tobacco leaf delimited by a rectangle, and the response variable was the number of local lesions/ cm2 (LL/cm2). A non-parametric analysis and a Kruskal Wallis test for comparison of means were used to evaluate the treatments, and significative differences were found (Ji<.0001). Sodium hypochlorite (spraying) and the subsequent application of milk prevented the appearance of local lesions and the transmission of ToBRFV. While the worst treatments were ethyl alcohol (immersion) with an average of 12 LL/cm2, and quaternary ammonium salts (immersion) with 3.22 LL/cm2. The rest of the treatments significantly reduced the number of LL/cm2 (<1), but did not prevent the appearance of systemic symptoms in the inoculated plants.</p>