Broad Spectrum Detection of Cucumber Mosaic Virus (CMV) Using The Polymerase Chain Reaction

Abstract

Abstract Primers complementary to conserved sequences of cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) RNA 3 were designed and reverse transcription‐polymerase chain reaction was directly performed in crude sap extracts of CMV‐infected plants. All isolates assayed belonging to subgroups I or II from different Spanish geographical locations and infecting tobacco, tomato and cucumber plants were detected. No amplification was observed in healthy or tomato aspermy virus (TAV)‐infected plants, nor in CMV‐infected pepper plants.A, dilution as low as 10 ‐7 in tobacco crude sap extracts or 100 fg of purified virus (c. 50 000 virus particles) could be detected, results showing that this procedure is 10 2 times more sensitive than enzyme‐linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA).