EVALUATION OF PRUNUS SPINOSA L. AS HOST OF SHARKA AND OTHER VIRUSES

Due to its wide occurrence in nature, the blackthorn (Prunus spinosa L.), closely allied to the plum (P. domestica L.), always presents a problem when a spatial isolation of plum orchards, and especially that of mother trees, is in question.
As knowledge on its role in epidemiology of plum viruses is incomplete, the problem of spatial isolation remains questionable.
Using the suitability of ELISA technique for large-scale testing, an attempt has been made to assess the presence of the most frequently occurring viruses in P. spinosa, viz.
PPV, NRSV and PDV.

Since PPV strains differ in the biological sense, testing of blackthorn was carried out from 8 different localities, using the plants immediately adjacent to the affected plum or peach trees.
After testing 557 plants, the percentage of plants infected with PPV, NRSV and PDV ranged from 0–5.8 %, 0–2.5 % and 0–96.7 %, respectively.
The percentage of plants infected with PPV, NRSV and PDV in the total number of plants tested amounted to 0.9 %, 0.5 % and 37.2 %, respectively.

XV International Symposium on Fruit Tree Diseases

M. Rankovic, I. Dulic-Markovic

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.1992.309.21