Plant Science

Plum pox virus (PPV) is the serious viral disease affecting Prunus species such as plum, apricot, cherry and peach. To date the few PPV resistance genetic resources found in Prunus germplasm, nevertheless the conventional breeding approaches are very challenging for use in fruit trees due to several limiting intrinsic factors. Methodology & Theoretical Orientation: Several biotechnological approaches could be used to develop PPV resistance in plants; nonetheless, the RNA interference is shown to be the most effective disease-control strategy (Ilardi and Tavazza 2015). In our initial report we have successfully used this      biotechnological technology to produce transgenic plants of commercial cultivar “Startovaja” (Prunus domestica L.) with PPV-derived ihpRNA construct (Mikhailov and Dolgov 2011). The transformation experiments were conducted using genetic construct containing the self-complementary sequences of fragment of PPVCP gene separated by an intron for the induction Plum Pox Virus (PPV) resistance through the mechanism of post-transcriptional gene silencing. Transgenic plum rootstocks plants have been produced from organogenic callus developed on leaf explants within 6-month culture after the inoculation. Conclusion & Significance: PCR-analysis confirmed the transgenic status of produced plants by the amplification of the fragments of “hairpin”-PPV-CP construct and hpt gene. To our knowledge, this is the first report of the successful attempt to produce transgenic plum rootstock