Practical Plant Virology: Protocols and Exercises

Unlike most pathogenic organisms, viruses require a special approach to establish their presence in a diseased plant, since they are not visible, even with a light microscope. Due to the tremendous damage of crop plants caused by viruses various methods and techniques have been developed to enable the investigation of these pathogens. A variety of protocols for determining the properties and identity of a virus or its behaviour in an infected plant are described in this manual. For teaching purposes, a number of class exercises have been added. The protocols have been selected in such a way as to be useful for plant viruses in both tropical and non-tropical parts of the world.