A TRANSGENIC TOMATO F1 HYBRID HARBORING A DEFECTIVE VIRAL REPLICASE SHOWS IMMUNITY TO CUCUMBER MOSAIC VIRUS IN FIELD TRIALS

Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) epidemics occur worldwide in tomato fields, resulting in severe yield losses.
Presently, no resistant commercial cultivars are available, since reported sources of genetic resistance are unsatisfactory or genetically complex.

We have recently described the generation of tomato lines which show immunity to CMV, following transformation with a truncated CMV replicase gene and subsequent screening of the R1 offsprings by mechanical inoculation (Gal-On et al., in press).

A F1 hybrid was generated by crossing one of our most resistant lines with the appropriate complementary line.
Field trials have indicated that deliberate inoculation with high titers of CMV resulted in ca. 50% reduction of yield in the non-transformed hybrid, while the transformed hybrid – hemizygous for the replicase gene – was unaffected and yielded normally.

VI International Symposium on Processing Tomato & Workshop on Irrigation & Fertigation of Processing Tomato

A. Gal-On, D. Wolf, M. Pilowsky, A. Zelcer

Agrobacterium, transformation, CMV, ELISA

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.1999.487.51