In Vitro Culture to Eliminate Peanut Stripe Virus from Peanut Seed

When excised seed axes of peanut seed, which tested serological positive for peanut stripe virus (PStV), were grown in vitro, 37.5% of the developing plants were PStV-negative. When plants were regenerated from shoot-tips (1 cm long) taken from in vitro-grown, virus-infected plants, 29.4% of them were virus-negative. PStV-positive plants obtained from virus-infected seed were grown for 12 wk on Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium supplemented with 40 mg/L ribavirin (MSR) resulted in 78.6% which tested negative for PStV. All plants from seed which tested positive for PStV were 100% identified as negative if grown on MSR for 16 wk. Similarly all plants were PStV negative when obtained from 1 cm long infected shoot tips (from plants grown on MS or MSR medium) if subsequently grown for 12 wk on MSR medium.