When were viruses first observed in roses?
When were viruses first observed in roses?
last revised 04-06-2016
by Henry Kuska
retired, Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry, University of Akron
Ph.D., Physical Chemistry
"This page gives the information that I have collected from my own literature searches and from others posting on the internet. Please let me know if you feel anything is not clear or is not addressed at all as I am continually updating/modifying it as I get feedback." The bold face was added by me for emphasis (H.Kuska).
A common statement made on the internet concerning when rose viruses were first observed goes something like this:
"The Rose Mosaic Virus is a Viral disease that affects Roses.
It comes from infected rootstock used to produce new roses. It was unknown until 1920."
This "unknown before 1920" statement is often used to support statements that suggest that there is no natural spread, only spread by attempting to bud other infected plants to roses.
Is this concept of "unknown before 1920" supported by the literature available to investigators of rose viruses? No, the following are 5 examples"
1) The 1962 American Rose Annual has an article titled "Viruses on Roses. by Philip Brierley, (Pathologist, Ornamentals Investigations, Beltsville, Maryland) It was reprinted with permission from the 1953 Yearbook of Agriculture Plant Diseases. The article states: "........ "Transmission of a chlorotic disorder by grafting from rose to rose was reported by M. Vibert in France as early as 1863." He then mentions 2 reports (by different authors) in Bulgaria, and one in Czechoslovakia (but does not give the dates).
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2) The following appeared in The 1964 issue of The American Rose Annual. The article was written by Jack A. Traylor, H. Keith Wagnon, and Harold E. Williams, California Department of Agriculture.
".......If the history of horticultural crops is closely examined, one can help but note references to old important varieties which have been discarded. Some of these old-time clones were discarded because they gradually declined in their ability to produce. In the simple terminology of the farmer, the varieties just "ran out." Long-time rose propagators can point to certain old roses which once performed well in the nursery or greenhouse but now are lacking in vigor - in effect, too have "run out." Although the "running out" of the various horticultural clones cannot, in all cases, be attributed to virus infection research workers have shown viruses to be a primary contributor. Some clones have gone through a gradual decline while others have declined more rapidly. Man's inadvertent use of virus-contaminated propagation material can bring about a slow decline in over-all production through the gradual infection of a clone. The process can be speeded up when there is an efficient insect or nematode vector to assist in moving the virus from infected plants to healthy plants in the field.
In the last 20 years, great strides have been made in the study of plant viruses. Concentrated work on virus diseases in potatoes, strawberries, raspberries, grapevines, cherries, apricots, peaches, plums and citrus have clearly shown the detrimental effects of virus diseases. Evidence of one graft-transmissible disorder in rose dates back 1863 but it was not until a much later date that viruses were shown to be the causative agents of diseases in roses. Perhaps the first determined efforts to demonstrate viruses in roses in the United States were in the late 1920's when much controversy developed about the cause of "infectious chlorosis" of rose, a disease now known as rose mosaic. Following this work, there have been various reports on rose viruses, both in the United States and in foreign countries.
The number of different viruses which occur naturally in roses is yet to be determined, however, reports to date indicate six to ten. The recognition of plant viruses is greatly dependent upon visual symptoms and plant pathologists working on rose virus diseases under different climatic conditions in widely separated areas of the world have been unable to properly compare the results of their work. This causes much hesitation and confusion in the identification of the viruses. All of the rose viruses have been demonstrated to be graft-transmissible and, although the plant pathologists cannot always agree on the identity of viruses, the fact remains that graft-transmission tests are reliable tools for virus control programs in determining the presence of a virus......"
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3) In the 1969 issue of the British Rose Annual, Professor J. Colhoun, University of Manchester, in an article titles "Rose Viruses - The Present State of Knowledge" states:
"Evidence of the existence of a graft transmissible chlorosis of the rose was provided in France as long ago as 1863." Later he states: "Rose Mosaic. This is the name now given to the disease originally described as infectious chlorosis."
The above paper was part of a group of papers (pages 149-157) in a symposium titled "Rose Virus" Chairman: Professor L. Broadbent, Bath University, University of Technology.
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4) An Iowa State University Ph.D. thesis that studied rose viruses stated: "Evidence of the existence of a graft transmissible agent inducing a leaf chlorosis of roses was recorded in France as early as 1863 (67)."
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5) A very good resource of early rose virus information is found in the June 1983 Ph.D thesis of Philip Caldwell Gardner Titled: Virus and virus-like diseases of roses in New Zealand.
The research was conducted at the Department of Horticulture and Plant Health, Massey University, New Zealand.
http://muir.massey.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10179/3563/02_whole.pdf?sequence=1
On page 10 of the thesis he states: "The first evidence of the existence of a graft transmissible chlorosis of the rose was recorded in France by Vilbert in 1863 when he described the effect of grafting chlorotic material on to root stocks."
After that he describes other early references,
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H.Kuska comment: Particularly now that scientific information is so readily available through the internet, I expect/hope that the opening statement of "unknown before 1920" will quickly disappear from rose virus articles.
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My other rose virus sites can be reached from the following index page:
https://sites.google.com/site/rosevirusindexpage/