Maintenance, symptoms and distribution of potato viruses X, S, Y, A, M and leafroll in potato tissue culture plantlets

Abstract

Maintaining potato viruses X, S, Y, A, M and leafroll in tissue culture plantlets is a convenient, cost and space effective alternative to the use of greenhouse plants. Of these six viruses, only certain strains of PVX induced symptoms in tissue culture plantlets. Nevertheless, all infected tissue culture plants were found to be more reliable than greenhouse grown plants as virus-infected controls in enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) testing. Another advantage of maintaining viruses in tissue culture plantlets was the elimination of contamination by other viruses or other pathogens. Leaves, stems, and roots of virus infected plantlets were tested separately for antigen levels by ELISA. In these tests, the stems and leaves of all but PVA infected tissue culture plants consistently gave positive ELISA values. In contrast, root tissue from PVY infected tissue culture plantlets was not reliable for PVY detection. In all cases, the viruses detected in the original source material were detected in the resulting tissue culture plantlets.