Can we vaccinate plants against viruses, as for humans?

Can we vaccinate plants against viruses, as for humans?


Dyears his greenhouses in the experimental field of INRAE ​​in Colmar, the team of the Vaccivine Research Project has, in the last seven years, worked on the short-rughe, disease of decline in the vine, which affects more than 60 % of the French wine surface. The main cause is a virus, the GFLV (Grapevine Fanleaf Virus), transmitted from vine to vines by a nematode, three millimeters who infects the roots when it feeds. Result: vineyards with yellowed leaves, distorted leaves or branches, and clusters, causing up to 100 % loss of yield with premature uprooting of plots.

At INRAE, researchers assess the level of protection against infection in 200 pot vines based on the premunition principle (cross-protection in English). “It is a process thanks to which an attenuated or hypoagressive virus will protect the plant from a more dangerous virus,” explains Olivier Lemaire, research director in the healthy research unit and quality of INRAE ​​COLMAR wine .

It is the American McKinney who is the first to have used, with success, a strain of the mosaic virus of tobacco to protect the plant from an infection by other strains. “A first test in 1929 had shown that pre-to buy a tobacco plant with a strain that did not cause symptoms of tobacco mosaic, we managed to protect the plant from the expression of problematic symptoms to […] Read more

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