Thanks, Pia. My introduction to the virus issue was about 1984. Then, the accepted method of transmission was through propagation. If J&P’s Iceberg was infected, you ordered from Canada because theirs were imported from Europe, budded on seedling stocks and stood a chance of being clean. Nope. Wrong on all accounts. Each new study shows previously held “truths” to be in error. I’m honestly impressed that initial infection may not have been anyone’s “fault” but something that just occurred. To the extent it was spread was definitely due to the industry practices, which were then thought to be efficient, but now known to be shoddy. Throw up my hands? Other than to practice what I can in my own garden to attempt to prevent problems, yes. What else can a back yard gardener/amateur breeder do? The “industry” here is in no shape to do much of anything. CP has the right idea as far as I’ve heard. Who knows what to expect from the remnants of the remaining others? Kim
“The real solution to the virus issue would be to clean up and propagate varieties in tissue culture. This has become absolutely standard for new perennial and annual varieties from many major companies (Terra Nova, Proven Winners, et cetera) and should be for roses.”
but the REAL, real solution is to abandon every cultivar that has ever been grafted onto anything, throughout rose history and start over. Dig a big hole and shove all the 'Double Delight’s and 'Fragrant Cloud’s and 'Abraham Darby’s in it and forget they existed, then only market new material that has never been grafted and has only been tested to grow on its own roots. That, my friends, is what you call a solution!
If you think that’s a tad cynical, you are right; the things I have seen in this industry have given me plenty reason to be cynical. Cleaning up whats already in commerce is hopeless, especially in this economy. If you thought the Big Boys shoulda been motivated to clean up their stock before the recession, you can be sure there’s not a speck of motivation to do it now.
Ive always thought the ARS notifying the 2 major big box stores was a good start, but its not illegal to sell viruses stock, which is odd to me.
Personally I cannot believe the transmission occurred naturally. It most likely would have passed via insects and as the study revealed the control roses stayed clean.
If the insects passed the virus there would not be clean rose in the world.
I have been studying tissue culture here and found some very interesting information about protoplasti fusion (written correctly ?) as well.
I just read that they have crossed potato and tomato and got a new and distinct pomato.
Many times thought it would be nice to cross Rosa Rugosa and strawberry or Rugosa and apple tree.
With that technology it would be possible, at least in theory.
Other thing, could any one recommend a good tissue culture home kit ?
Any opinions how they work, do the plants stay well while changing the liquid, do they stay alive even if an air is not steril etc. Are they worth trying ?
Home practise is not enough to get very small explant thinking of it would be cleaner of the virus or how it is ?
Any experiences, please.
The following was stated: “If the insects passed the virus there would not be clean rose in the world.”
H.Kuska comments:
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Roses have an immune system. Many plants have visuses that are insect spread, yet only a fraction of the plants are virused.
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One of the rose viruses (rose spring dwarf) has been conclusively shown to be spread by aphids. Yet not all roses have that virus.
Link: www.helpmefind.com/rose/gl.php?n=467
Paul,
I agree that there is little chance older cultivars will ever get cleaned up. The process is expensive, and without the ability to patent the result it would be hard to make money doing it. But I think it would be quite reasonable to have all new introductions screened for viruses and cleaned up if necessary. Besides, ‘Fragrant Cloud’, ‘Double Delight’, et cetera will go extinct before too long anyway. Fewer and fewer people are at all interested in growing varieties dependent on fungicide life support
Pia,
I’ve done a very small amount of tissue culture. Absolute sterility of both the air you are working in and all materials is essential. It can be done at home, but expect some level of contamination unless you invest in a laminar flow hood.
Cleaning up virus infection in TC requires a lot of expertise and perfect conditions, because to do it effectively, you have to work repeatedly with very small amounts of tissue. It also has to be combined with virus indexing (ELISA) to confirm the virus has been actually removed. Not practical for a home set up.
Protoplast fusion is also probably not possible at home, and hasn’t shown much practical value to date either. Two very different genomes can be shoved into one cell, but that doesn’t mean the two sets of genes can then work together to create a healthy plant. Lots of researchers made crazy hybrids with the method, but I don’t think any of them made it out of the lab into something useful.
I’m supposed to have some new ELISA type done on my antibodies, lol =/ It’ll be like antibody test number 10+. I can only assume that testing on plants can be as inexact, and also at its infancy stages in as far as technology goes.
A problem with Elisa is that it’s visual and it can only identify viruses that are in plants with a high titer of virus.
The coming thing in plant pathology is virus extraction and then replication and the resulting material is sequenced and compared with known primers. (The work done to isolate the Rose Rosette virus give detailed descriptions of the procedures; they’re in Alma Lacey’s M.S. work.
This sort of approach is far more definitive that Elisa tests; it’s also how Rose Spring Dwarf was isolated and described.
I don’t know who’s doing comparable virus work in Europe. Kaminska and his collegues in eastern Europe have done similar work on phytoplasmas in roses (in Glass House roses in Europe) as well as in many other plants.
Thank you all about the answers.
Referring to H. Kuska comments:
“Roses have an immune system.Many plants have visuses that are insect spread, yet only a fraction of the plants are virused.”
“One of the rose viruses (rose spring dwarf) has been conclusively shown to be spread by aphids. Yet not all roses have that virus.”
Exactly, the roses have an immune system and maybe that is why for example the control roses in the study mentioned in the previous posts stayed clean. So, it can be understood that in natural conditions roses are resistant at least to apple- and ringspot mosaic virus. I have not found any study which can show that apple or ringspot mosaic virus can be spread by insects.
I referred in my earlier post to Kim Ruperts frase “I’m honestly impressed that initial infection may not have been anyone’s “fault” but something that just occurred”
Thank you.
The statement was made: " I have not found any study which can show that apple or ringspot mosaic virus can be spread by insects."
H.Kuska comment. It is not clear if you mean to any plant. If you mean any plant.
PNRSV and ApMV are considered the 2 most common of the viruses that collectively are called RMV.
Title: “Transmission of prunus necrotic ringspot virus using plum pollen and thrips.”
Authors: Greber, R. S., Klose, M. J., Milne, R. S., and
Teakle, D. S. 1991.
Published in: Ann. Appl. Biol. volumn 118, pages 589-593, (1991).
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1744-7348.1991.tb05348.x/abstract
Title: "Thrips-facilitated transmission of prune
dwarf and prunus necrotic ringspot viruses
from cherry pollen to cucumber."
Authors: Greber, R. S., Teakle, D. S., and Mink, G. I.
Published in: Plant Dis. volumn 76, pages 1039-1041, (1992).
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=4322589
Concerning ApMV see the full paper available at:
http://jgv.sgmjournals.org/content/81/1/273.full.pdf+html
“These data suggest that the present taxonomy should be revised, and that AMV should be considered an aphid-transmissible ilarvirus.”
the REAL, real solution is to abandon every cultivar that has ever been grafted onto anything, throughout rose history and start over.
I’ll add this to my list of excuses for spending way too much time working with species roses.
We can only hope that Henry’s optimism is justified because otherwise it will take about 36 breeder lifetimes to get to where we are now having started clean.
Don that is why when I buy in new cultivar types to use in my breeding programmes, I dread that have nt been infected
To Mr Kuska,
I am sorry if I was unclear. I was still talking about roses and only about the roses.
Vegetables are other thing. At least here in Spain it is commonly thought among the agricultors that RMV can be spread by insects, by soil and by pollen, by seed, by fungus etc. etc. to the vegetables and to the fruits.
Other thing,
“If you think that’s a tad cynical, you are right; the things I have seen in this industry have given me plenty reason to be cynical”
If the state of the matters is that bad in rose industry and
a lack of moral and good business practise spoil the views there, why dont you breeders and other rose persons establish your own nursery or nurseries where you can have a control over your products.
For example, I have ordered roses directly from Kordes and they are of good quality.
I have also bought Meilland roses from local nurseries and seen quite often some virus infected roses there.
The signs in the leaves have been clear zig zag patterns or ringspots so I have not had any doubt of it. There is one whole seller in Spain, the Meillands representative and practically that representative sell all the roses for the all local small nurseries.So it is the same where you go.
In one local nursery here the lady owner did not know what was the zigzag pattern in her rose… Mostly they sell roses with an etiqet “yellow rose” or “red rose” (and usually they are Landora or Chrysler Imperial). Those roses also come from the same whole seller.
I have several comments about a rose virus study in Spain at the link below.
Link: www.uk.gardenweb.com/forums/load/roses/msg071057108109.html?17
This is difficult, emotionally.
I have a row of seedlings in the field, several of which have shown virus symptoms. I’ve dug out most of them, and am still in denial about three or four more. They were grown in 4" pots all last summer, in close proximity to each other. They probably had aphids last year, and they had aphids now - I just sprayed them.
There are some interesting and potentially lovely crosses out there that I’m attached to…I love to go out every day and look for new blossoms. Now my daily scouting has the added element of fear…what if they’re ALL infected? What if some just don’t show symptoms? If I find and introduce a really lovely rose, maybe I’ll be introducing a virus along with it.
Trying to see some positive, maybe this will result in a selection of roses that have either a resistance to initial infection or or genetics for tolerance to the virus.
Joe,
I don’t think you need to concern yourself about virus in your plants at this time. Keep the plants well fed and see what happens over the season and maybe next year if they survive. My guess is that that leaf pattern results from some sort of nutritional deficiency related to soil leaching this year (you have had a lot of rain this year, right?). If they have a virus problem that will become obvious over time. Meantime, just let them do their thing. The world will not come to an end if you fail to get rid of a plant the moment you think it’s virused.
Peter
“If the state of the matters is that bad in rose industry and a lack of moral and good business practise spoil the views there, why dont you breeders and other rose persons establish your own nursery or nurseries where you can have a control over your products.”
Been there, done that, got out of it before it put me in the poor house (or the nut house). To be blunt; don’t get into the “boutique rose nursery” business unless you want to be driven mad by the daily routine of running a small business and don’t care one bit about ever seeing a profit, cause ya won’t. Especially not now with such a depressed industry. I expect that in another 5 years we will have a paltry selection of nurseries to pick from. We’re well on our way already.
Pia, here in the US, the exclusive source of Meilland roses is Star-Meilland, a partnership between Star (Conard Pyle) and Meilland. I would venture to guess that a large portion of their budded roses are infected, based upon what I have witnessed in nurseries, both wholesale and retail and it public and private gardens. I sincerely doubt there is a source for their roses here which is clean. When you see brand new introductions coming from the exclusive source, complete with characteristic symptoms, what else are we to suspect?
It IS our (the consuming public’s) fault. Even in the best of times, PRICE is the determining factor. Quality is demanded and complained about, but PRICE is what makes the purchase decision virtually every time. No matter what the product, if we can get it cheaper, we do. Always have. I guess it’s human nature, but we’ve paid our money, taken our chances and now we’re paying for them. Cynical? You bet! Well earned cynicism. Even when the conscientious nurseryman does his best to produce a quality product, the consuming public and American business does their best to under cut him and get it cheaper. I’ve seen it too many times and it doesn’t get better. Paul is right. We’re headed down that slippery slope and all we can do about it now is complain because it ain’t gonna get better in any foreseeable future. Kim
The original Edmunds was fairly thorough, although Im guessing not perfect. They always used stock from multiflora via seed.
One other possibility is to live with virused roses but to breed for roses that have a stronger than normal immune system.
Another is to “infect” roses with a very weak strain to “cross protect” against more severe strains. I had heard that a Florida grower was doing that but someone else said he thought that the Florida grower was just doing it period.
Also a rose grower can strengthen his/her roses with healthy care and possibility helping the immune sysytem by adding an aspirin or harpin (see link below).