Establishment of a novel method for curing from tomato yellow leaf curl disease

• Project/Area Number: 26660039
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Plant protection science
• Research Institution: Utsunomiya University
• Principal Investigator: Nishigawa Hisashi 宇都宮大学, 農学部, 准教授 (60361614)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Project Status: Completed (Fiscal Year 2015)
• Budget Amount: ¥3,770,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,900,000、Indirect Cost: ¥870,000); Fiscal Year 2015: ¥1,040,000 (Direct Cost: ¥800,000、Indirect Cost: ¥240,000); Fiscal Year 2014: ¥2,730,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,100,000、Indirect Cost: ¥630,000)
• Keywords: トマト黄化葉巻ウイルス / リカバリー

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV) is a causal agent of tomato yellow disease and lead to devastating crop loss. Curing this disease is almost impossible but sometimes "recovery" can be seen at a high temperature. "Recovery" is a phenomenon that show no symptoms with new leaves from plants that show symptoms. Therefore, it may be possible to establish a novel method to cure virus-infected plants. In this experiments, about half number of tomato plants showed recovery at 30℃. But the recovered leaves showed accumulation of viral genomic DNA, suggesting that "recovery" is not the result of disappearance of the virus.