PRELIMINARY RESULTS OF IN VITRO THERMOTHERAPY OF PEAR CULTIVARS

Two pear cultivars ‘Alexander Lucas’ and ‘Elektra’ were selected for application of in vitro thermotherapy at 39°C as a technique for virus elimination.
Trees were selected and the presence of viruses was initially determined before thermotherapy by ELISA and RT-PCR. Based on the results of these tests, both pear cultivars were infected with Apple stem pitting virus (ASPV). Cultivars were successfully multiplied using in vitro cultures on MS medium with 1.5 mg L^-1 BAP. Heat treatment (39±0.5°C) was applied to the in vitro cultures on the same MS medium with 1.5 mg L^-1 BAP as for multiplication.
Between 5 and 10 days of heat therapy, the green apical parts of the axis, comprising the apical meristem plus one or two leaf primordia, were dissected and transferred to a fresh multiplication MS medium.
For ‘Elektra’, 100% and for ‘Alexander Lucas’, 79.2% of isolated apices survived and developed shoots.
Six months after the end of heat treatment, eight clones of pear cultivar ‘Elektra’ and seven clones of pear cultivar ‘Alexander Lucas’ were free of all tested viruses based on repeated RT-PCR analysis.
The percentage of ASPV elimination after heat treatment was 67% for ‘Elektra’ and 17% for ‘Alexander Lucas’. Achieved results are preliminary and other sanitation techniques and analysis of pear cultivars used in the project will be carried out in the following years.

I International Symposium on Biotechnology of Fruit Species: BIOTECHFRUIT2008

F. Paprstein, J. Sedlak, L. Talacko, L. Svobodova, P. Zeman, J. Polak, M. Hassan

certification, ELISA, PCR, virus detection, virus elimination, virus infection

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2009.839.32