Elimination of Cucumber mosaic virus from gerbera (Gerbera jamesonii) cv. Zingaro through in vitro chemotherapy of capitulum explants

摘要

Gerbera (Gerbera jamesonii, family Asteraceae) is a popular plant grown in polyhouses for its cut flowers which have high potential for floriculture industry in India due to its beautiful blooms of various colours and long vase life. However, gerbera flower production has been hampered due to infections of viruses and among them Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) is considered to be the most important because it caused severe flower deformation leading to decline in the market value of gerbera flowers. Therefore, elimination of CMV was attempted through in vitro chemotherapy (using 30 mg/L virazole) of similar to 4 x 8 mm(2) capitulum explants of infected gerbera cv. Zingaro for its quality improvement. A total of 38 plants were developed from 57 explants on Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium supplemented with 1 mg/L 6-benzylaminopurine (BAP), 0.5 mg/L indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) and 0.5 mg/L adenine sulphate. The developed plants showed absence of CMV in 81.6% (31/38) plants when screened by RT-PCR using coat protein specific primers of CMV. The CMV-free plants showed better plant growth: increase of 53.7% in length of leaf lamina and 59.2% in leaf width as well as better blooming performance: increase of 62.6% in flower size (diameter in cm) and 69.1% in number of flowers per pot having intense red flower colour as compared to the control ones. Elimination of CMV by in vitro chemotherapy (using virazole) of capitulum explants of gerbera cv. Zingaro is being reported for the first time from India