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Etiology

Purification, Serology, and Some Properties of a Mechanically Transmissible Virus Associated with Green Ring Mottle Disease in Peach and Cherry. K. R. Zagula, Department of Botany and Plant Pathology, Michigan State University, East Lansing 48824, Present address: Department of Plant Pathology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh 27695-7616; N. M. Aref, and D. C. Ramsdell. Department of Botany and Plant Pathology, Michigan State University, East Lansing 48824. Phytopathology 79:451-456. Accepted for publication 10 November 1988. Copyright 1989 The American Phytopathological Society. DOI: 10.1094/Phyto-79-451.

Thin, flexuous, rod-shaped viruslike particles were purified from peach and cherry trees affected by green ring mottle disease. Purified particles ranged from 1,000 to 2,000 nm in length and were 5–6 nm in diameter. The presence of fibrillar inclusions in infected cells, together with virion properties such as buoyant density (1.24–1.25 g/cm³) and nucleic acid and capsid protein molecular weights (2.5 × 10⁶ and 2.5 × 10⁴, respectively), are properties the virus shares with some closteroviruses. Direct and indirect enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) readily detected the virus in various Prunus spp. A disease resembling green ring mottle was reproduced in cultivar Montmorency sour cherry trees after slash inoculation with purified virus, and the thin viruslike particles were detected by direct ELISA and electron microscopy in these plants.