Elimination of Cucumber mosaic virus from gladiolus by meristem tip culture, thermotherapy and electrotherapy

Abstract

Flowers of Gladiolus sp. are among the top six flowers of export value and in Iran take the second place in the production of cut flowers. Cucumber mosaic virus is one of the most common viruses in gladiolus worldwide. As, the gladioli are propagated through corms, therefore viral diseases could be easily transmitted to the next generation. To produce healthy stock plants, it is important to produce and culture virus-free corms. In the present research, thermotherapy along with meristem culture, electrotherapy along with meristem culture and meristem culture alone were employed to eliminate CMV from infected gladiolus plants. CMV detection using DAS-ELISA showed that 73 percent of the regenerated plants were free of viruses whereas, RT-PCR analysis showed that 42 percent of plants were virus-free. The efficiency of virus elimination from thermo-treated meristems culture with size 0.5 were 100%. This is the first report of application of electrotherapy for CMV elimination from gladiolus plants and the best results were obtained by using 15 milliamps for 15 minutes. The results showed that thermotherapy along with meristem culture was a more efficient method for elimination of CMV from infected gladiolus plants.

Keywords

• gladiolus
• cucumber mosaic virus
• virus elimination