Development of an agroinoculation system for full-length and GFP-tagged cDNA clones of cucumber green mottle mosaic virus.

The complete 6243-nucleotide sequence of a cucumber green mottle mosaic virus (CGMMV) isolate from bottle gourd in Zhejiang province, China, was determined. A full-length cDNA clone of this isolate was constructed by inserting the cDNA between the 35S promoter and the ribozyme in the binary plasmid pCB301-CH. A suspension of an Agrobacterium tumefaciens EHA105 clone carrying this construct was highly infectious in Nicotiana benthamiana and bottle gourd. Another infectious clone containing the green fluorescence protein (GFP) reporter gene was also successfully constructed. This study is the first report of the efficient use of agroinoculation for generating CGMMV infections.