1992 Volume 58 Issue 3 Pages 464-468
A new disease of tomato with yellow mosaic symptoms was found in Japan in 1983. A strain of alfalfa mosaic virus (AMV-T), proved to be the causal agent of the disease, was characterized comparing with another isolate of AMV from red clover (AMV-R). The two isolates varied in symptomatology in tomato, pea and petunia. Neither of the isolates affected soybean which is susceptible to many strains of AMV. AMV-T and AMV-R were slightly different from each other in polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis of double-stranded RNAs extracted from Nicotiana glutinosa plants infected with the two isolates, indicating that they had distinct electrophero-types. In agar gel diffusion using anti-AMV-T serum, a spur was formed, which was not formed in a test using anti-AMV-R serum, indicating that these two isolates were serologically related but antigenically different.
