1Department of Plant Pathology, CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar-125 004, India.
2Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore-560012.
3Department of Biochemistry, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore-560012.
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.
Cotton leaf curl virus (CLCuV) disease is an important factor attributing to decrease in area under cotton cultivation in Haryana. CLCuV is transmitted by whitefly Bemisia tabaci and both the virus and vector has a very wide host range. Transgenic cotton resistant to CLCuV was achieved by introducing AV2gene of CLCuV in antisense orientation via Agrobacterium tumifaciens-mediated plant transformation method. Transgenic cotton plants were evaluated for virus resistance and agronomic performance for two consecutive years. CLCuV-Dab was inoculated on transgenic cotton cv. F846 in contained greenhouse using viruliferous whiteflies at 3 leaves stage and again twice at an interval of five days. An acquisition feeding period and infection feeding period of 24 h each was allowed for virus inoculation. Test plants and healthy controls (transgenic and non-transgenic cv. F846) showed no symptoms and these plants tested negative to the virus in PCR using universal geminiviruses primers. The non-transgenic controls inoculated with CLCuV-Dab produced symptoms and tested positive to the virus in PCR. The results indicate that the transgenic cotton plants remained free of CLCuKV-Dab infection thereby offering good resistance to virus. Transgenic plant morphology, seed and lint production were on par with the normal F846 cotton cultivar.
