Detection and Diagnosis of Cucumber Mosaic Virus in Infected Plants Using Monoclonal Antibodies by Enzyme-linked Immunosorbent Assays

Abstract

A comparison of methods to detect and diagnosis Cucumber mosaic virus by using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) and an Immunocapture Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction (IC-RT-PCR) was made to determine the detection limit of each method. We produced monoclonal antibodies for two Japanese strains Pepo, M2-Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) as antigens. Tests to detect the pure virus protein with ELISA and IC-RT-PCR were performed and IC-RT-PCR was found to be more sensitive, reaching 10 pg/ml for the pure virus protein, while ELISA method levels were 0.7 ng/ml. Furthermore, we concluded that the present method is very useful for the diagnosis of infected plants.