2011 Volume 80 Issue 2 Pages 145-149
In fruit trees and vegetative reproductive plants, viral elimination from mother plants is conducted to produce virus- and viroid-free nursery plants. In citrus, shoot tip culture and semi-micrografting combined with thermotherapy were adopted for viral elimination; however, these methods should be modified for ease or higher efficiency. One solution might be the application of effective antiviral agents. In this study, we tested the efficacy of 4 antiviral agents, ribavirin, foscarnet, zidovudine, and enfuvirtide, against Satsuma dwarf virus (SDV) in Citrus unshiu Marc. ‘Ueno-wase’ to screen effective agents. The results showed that foscarnet had the highest efficacy against SDV at semi-micrografting combined with thermotherapy, and that the efficacy was significantly different from that of the untreated control. On the other hand, ribavirin, which was thought to be efficient against some citrus viruses, has no significant effect against SDV. There were no harmful effects of foscarnet or ribavirin on re-generation. It was considered that the optimization of treatment method and concentration is required before applying ribavirin as an antiviral agent against SDV. Foscarnet was thought to be highly effective against SDV and was also expected to have high efficacy against other plant viruses. Moreover, our results suggested the possibility that other human antiviral agents that have not been investigated in plants could be effective against plant viruses.
