Division of Biotechnology, Indian Institute of Horticultural Research, Hessaraghatta, Bangalore-560089.
Abstracts of the papers presented at the 16th Annual Convention and International Symposium of Indian Virological Society on “Management of Vector-Borne Viruses” at International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Patancheru-502324, Hyderabad, India, February 7–10, 2006.
Tomato leaf curl virus (ToLCV) is an important disease of tomato in all parts of the country. We have generated transgenic tomato plants cv Pusa Ruby resistant to ToLCV by incorporating viral replicase gene of the severe isolate collected from farmer's field. The gene was sub-cloned into a plant expression vector containing a plant promoter and a terminator and was electroporated into tomato seedlings. A total of 184 T1 plants were raised and were challenged with viruliferous white flies. Twenty plants were immune to the disease at the end of three months and after repeated challenging. Genomic DNA was isolated from these resistant 20 plants and was checked by PCR for presence of the transgene. The PCR amplified product was evaluated by dot blot with an internal segment of the replicase gene. All plants tested positive for the presence of transgene.
