Detection of tobacco rattle virus in tubers exhibiting symptoms of corky ringspot by polymerase chain reaction

Tobacco rattle virus (TRV)-specific products were obtained by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) of nucleic acid extracts prepared from tubers exhibiting symptoms of corky ringspot (CRS) disease, Viral origin of amplification products was confirmed by hybridization of PCR products with a nonradioactively-labeled complementary DNA probe prepared from purified TRV RNA. Results suggest that TRV is not uniformly distributed in CRS-affected tubers and appears to be in low concentration in tuber tissue.