THE INFECTIOUS CLONE CONSTRUCTION OF Ageratum yellow vein virus ISOLATE AND ITS ASSOCIATED BETASATELLITE FROM MALAYSIA

Ageratum yellow vein Malaysia virus (AYVMV) is a new isolate of monopartite begomovirus that has been identified to cause the occurrence of typical leaf curl symptoms in tomato fields in Peninsular Malaysia. Like other monopartite begomoviruses, AYVMV can only be transmitted exclusively using the whiteflies, thus become the major constraint to study this virus in detail, particularly in the breeding program for AYVMV-resistant tomato plants. Therefore, it is important to have a simple effective solution of inoculation technique for the efficient evaluation of resistance to AYVMV. Here, we had described the use of infectious clones harboring a dimer of the full-length AYVMV DNA-A like genome and its associated betasatellite molecule in the pCAMBIA1304 binary vectors to inoculate the tomato cultivar MT1 via Agrobacterium-mediated inoculation technique. Our results showed the infectious clones were effective in the tested tomato plants resulting in the appearance of typical leaf curl symptoms and the viral DNA sequences can be detected by polymerase chain reaction analyses.