Cucumber Mosaic Virus Infection of Tobacco Transplants and Purslane (Portulaca oleracea). J. Allan Dodds, Department of Plant Pathology, Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, New Haven 06504. Gordon S. Taylor, Department of Plant Pathology, Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, New Haven 06504. Plant Dis. 64:294-296. Accepted for publication 2 November 1979. Copyright 1980 American Phytopathological Society. DOI: 10.1094/PD-64-294.

Plants of a cigar-wrapper tobacco cultivar with the local lesion response to tobacco mosaic virus developed systemic mosaic symptoms in the field and a greenhouse after seedling propagation in trays resting on crushed stone in a hoop-house. In the field, infected plants were sequential within rows and not in groups across rows. A virus with the morphology and antigenicity of cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) isolated from field plants with symptoms induced a mosaic when inoculated into squash and tobacco. The same virus was isolated from plants of purslane (Portulaca oleracea) and one plant of plantain (Plantago major) showing mosaic symptoms and growing as weeds in the crushed stone floor of the hoop-house. The tobacco plants probably became infected as seedlings, with purslane as a possible source of CMV. This is the first report of CMV in purslane in the United States.