Department of Botanical and Environmental Sciences, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar-143 005, India.
Abstracts of the papers presented at the XVIII National Conference of Indian Virological Society at Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, India, December 11–13, 2008.
Plants belonging to different taxonomic families have been reported to contain substances which when applied to other species make them resistant to virus infection. Indian citrus ringspot virus (ICRSV) is associated with a serious disease of kinnow manadarin resulting in severe losses to the crop. This paper deals with the use of aqueous extract of Boerhaavia diffusa combined with shoot tip grafting in vitro for elimination of ICRSV from kinnow. The nodal segments from ICRSV infected kinnow plants (as confirmed by indirect ELISA and RT-PCR) were inoculated on MS medium supplemented with 2-iP (1 mg/L) and ME (500 mg/L) and different concentrations (4 - 28 mg/L) of the extracts. The cultures were incubated in culture room maintained at 25 ± 2°C and 70% relative humidity under 40 mmole/m2/sec cool white fluorescent light daily for 16h. Shoot tips were excised from the sprouts of these nodal segments after 10–15 days and micrografted on to rough lemon in vitro. ICRSV elimination was observed in maximum of 42.86% cultures following treatment with B. diffusa root extract at 28 mg/L. Boerhaavia diffusa root extract coupled with in vitro shoot tip grafting can be successfully employed for the elimination of ICRSV from Citrus spp.
