NON-TRANSMISSION OF PLUM POX VIRUS

Abstract

The vertical transmission of Plum pox virus (PPV) from infected mother plants to their progeny has been investigated for many years with controversial reports. The first investigations about PPV transmission through seeds were based only on biological tests: Szirmai (1961) recorded seed transmission in apricot, Savulescu and Macovei (1965) and Coman and Cociu (1976) in plum and peach, while Jordovic (1963) were not able to detect PPV in plum seedlings. Despite of serological and molecular diagnosis development, reports about vertical transmission of PPV revealed different results. Nemeth and Kolber (1982) detected in apricot seedlings a low transmission rate of PPV while Shimanski et al. (1988) in plum and apricot, Eynard et al. (1991) and Triolo et al. (1993) in apricot found no transmission of PPV in seedlings from infected seeds. Pasquini (1998, 2000) obtained negative results regarding vertical transmission on 12 apricot cvs. infected with D strain and six peach cvs. infected with M strain. The same results were obtained by Myrta et al. in apricot and plum (1998) and Glasa et al. in plum and myrobolan (1999). Slovakova et al. (2002) reported the transmission of PPV in a few seedlings from infected seeds using DAS-ELISA. Recently study of Milusheva et al. (2008) showed non-transmission through seeds of PPV-M strain in plum and PPV-Rec strain in apricot.