TRANSGENIC TOMATO PLANTS EXPRESSING THE TOMATO YELLOW LEAF CURL VIRUSCAPSID PROTEIN ARE RESISTANT TO THE VIRUS

The tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV) gene that encodes the capsid protein (V1) was placed under transcriptional control of the cauliflo wer mosaic virus 35S promoter and cloned into an Agrobacterium Ti-deri ved plasmid and used to transform plants from an interspecific tomato hybrid, Lycopersicon esculentum XL. pennellii (F1), sensitive to the T YLCV disease. When transgenic F1 plants, expressing the V1 gene, were inoculated with TYLCV using whiteflies fed on TYLCV-infected plants, t hey responded either as untransformed tomato or showed expression of d elayed disease symptoms and recovery from the disease with increasingl y more resistance upon repeated inoculation. Transformed plants that w ere as sensitive to inoculation as untransformed controls expressed th e V1 gene at the RNA level only. All the transformed plants that recov ered from disease expressed the TYLCV capsid protein.