AGROBACTERIUM-MEDIATED GENE TRANSFER AS A TOOL FOR THE INDUCTION OF RESISTANCE AGAINST PLUM POX VIRUS (PPV) IN PLUM (PRUNUS DOMESTICA L.)

Plum Pox Potyvirus (PPV), one of the most important pathogens in plum, apricot and recently peach cultivars, has spread all over Central and Southern Europe.
In these regions the Sharka disease causes heavy yield losses.
Fruits of susceptible cultivars are highly damaged by severe ‘pox’ symptoms and up to 90 % of the fruit fall down prematurely.

The transmission of PPV by aphids renders it more difficult to control.
An effective treatment to cure virus infected trees is not available.
The lack of natural resistance genes and the very long periods which are needed for conventional breeding procedures give advantages for genetically engineered resistance.

Many reports on transgenic plants expressing viral coat protein genes demonstrate the effectiveness of genetically engineered virus resistance (Grumet, 1990). Considerable efforts have been made to establish reliable protocols for regeneration and selection of transformed woody plants (Mante et al., 1991; Laimer et al., 1992).

Plum plants can be regenerated from cotyledon halfs of mature seeds.
The regeneration system is extended to develop a transformation system to induce resistance against PPV in plum using the gene transfer system of Agrobacterium tumefaciens. Cotyledons were co-cultivated with A. tumefaciens strains LBA 4404 or EHA 101 containing one of the

V International Symposium on Plum and Prune Genetic, Breeding and Pomology

A. Korte, E. Maiβ, R. Casper

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.1994.359.24