Current GM crops are thus far the almost exclusive domain of herbicide and insect resistance traits. The Bt toxins used for insect control have a narrow specificity against lepidopteran and coleopteran pests only. Yet, aphids and thrips are highly important pests worldwide, causing severe direct losses and transmitting devastating viruses such as Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus (TSWV). So far, few us...

Hydroponic experiments were conducted to investigate vanadium uptake by Chinese green mustard and tomato plants and its effect on their growth. Twenty-eight (Chinese green mustard) and 79 days (tomato) after germination, the plants were exposed for a further seven days to a solution containing six different concentrations of ammonium metavanadate (0-80 mg/l NH4VO3). The vanadium accumulated in ...

Ralstonia solanacearum is the causal agent of bacterial wilt (BW), one of the most important bacterial diseases worldwide. We used cDNA microarray to survey the gene expression profile in transgenic tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) overexpressing Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) CBF1 (AtCBF1), which confers tolerance to BW. The disease-resistant phenotype is correlated with constitutive expressi...

in this study, trichoderma harzianum bi was evaluated for its capability to reduce the incidence and severity of the root-knot nematode, meloidogyne javanica, and fusarium wilt, f. oxysporum f. sp. lycopersici, as causal agents of a complex disease of tomato in the laboratory and greenhouse conditions. initial in vitro studies revealed that the parasitism of m. javanica eggs by t. harzianum bi ...

RNA silencing controls endogenous gene expression and drives defensive reactions against invasive nucleic acids like viruses. In plants, it has been demonstrated that RNA silencing can be transmitted through grafting between scions and silenced rootstocks to attenuate virus and viroid accumulation in the scions. This has been obtained mostly using transgenic plants, which may be a drawback in c...

Phytohormones such as salicylic acid (SA), ethylene (ET) and jasmonic acid (JA) play key roles in plant defense following pathogen attack. Involvement of these hormones in plant susceptibility following Fusarium oxysporum (Fo) infection has mostly been studied in Arabidopsis thaliana. However, Fo causes vascular wilt disease in a broad range of crops, including tomato (Solanum lycopersicum). Su...

Tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV) is a negative-strand RNA virus in the family Bunyaviridae and propagates in both insects and plants. Although TSWV can infect a wide range of plant species, host factors involved in viral RNA synthesis of TSWV in plants have not been characterized. In this report, we demonstrate that the cell-free extract derived from one of the host plants can activate mRNA tra...

Compared to other vegetable crops, the major viral constraints affecting pepper crops in the Mediterranean basin have been remarkably stable for the past 20 years. Among these viruses, the most prevalent ones are the seed-transmitted tobamoviruses; the aphid-transmitted Potato virus Y and Tobacco etch virus of the genus Potyvirus, and Cucumber mosaic virus member of the genus Cucumovirus; and t...