Selecting Stone Fruit Trees Free From Virus Diseases J. A. Mi!brath Agrkukural Experimenl Station Oregon State College Corva II Slation Bulletin 522 August 1952 Foreword This bulletin summarizes the results of 10 years of investigation on methods of improving stone fruit nursery stock. At the initiation of this project, Oregon stone fruit orchards were severely infested with virus diseases which were greatly reducing the annual production of marketable fruit.Most nursery stock planted was already infested with at least a mild type of virus disease, and many of the trees produced no marketable fruit even with the best of growing conditions. Methods since have been developed which enable nurserymen to use budwood from regularly inspected registered trees or scion orchards which have been tested for virus and found to be the best stock available for future orchards.This enables growers to pur- chase Oregon-grown nursery stock with assurance that their future trees will produce more and higher quality fruit than in the past. Dean and Director Table of Contents Page Introduction 5 Tree Registration 6 Indexing for Virus-Free Trees 8 Peach as an index plant 9 Virus-free Montmorency as an index host 9 Prunus tomentosa as an index plant 11 Kwanzan flowering cherry as an index tree 11 Shirofugen flowering cherry as an index tree 13 Steps followed for indexing a tree 15 Virus-Free Scion Wood Orchards 16 Results and Discussion 17 Recommended Variety Selections 21 The Bing variety of sweet cherry 21 The Royal Ann or Napoleon variety of sweet cherry 22 The Lambert variety of sweet cherry 22 The Black Republican variety of sweet cherry 23 The Black Tartarian variety of sweet cherry 23 Miscellaneous sweet and sour cherry varieties 23 Sour cherry varieties 23 Peach varieties 24 Prune and plum varieties 24 Certification of Stone Fruit Trees 25 Summary 26 Literature Cited 27 3 Selecting Stone Fruit Trees Free From Virus Diseases J. A. MILBRATH Plant Pathologist COMPILATIONS (1)* indicate that there are between 40 RECENTand 50 distinct virus diseases in North America which occur on stone fruit trees.Nearly half of these are known to be present in Oregon stone fruit orchards.Fortunately, many of these are not the serious type of disease that causes destruction of the orchards or complete loss of the crop.Thousands of dollars are lost annually, however, by the reduction of yield and quality of fruit.In addition to this sustained loss, such diseases as western X disease of peach and western X little cherry and albino disease of cherry are actually destroying trees and orchards, and serve as a serious threat to the stone fruit industry. This situation brought about the initiation of a research project to cope with the problem.One logical phase of this project was to start the virus control program in the nurseries where trees are propa- gated for planting new orchards and replacing dead or sick trees. lv\rhen trees that are already diseasedare planted in an orchard there is no opportunity to correct the situation, and serious losses may re- stilt for the life of the tree. A survey of the trees being used by nurserymen as sources of propagation stock emphasized the seriousness of the problem. Very few nurserymen had heard of a virus disease and none of them was familiar enough with a virus condition to recognize that anything was wrong with the tree.Unfortunately, a tree carrying some of the more serious viruses often produced satisfactory 2-year-old whips.Very few nurserymen had an organized mother block for their scion wood, and were cutting buds or scions from any source available or convenient, withotit any regard to the desirability of the trees as a parent for orchard stock.This emphasized the need for some program which would provide nurserymen with disease-free sources of propagating stock. 1vVhen a virus control program was started in 1944, much of the research on the stone fruit virus complex was in the early stages of investigation.No virus-free stock was available and methods of indexing for virus were just beginning to be developed. The nursery- men could not be expected to stop propagating stone fruit trees until See literature cited page 27. 6 AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION BULLETIN 522 virus-free sources could be found, therefore the following four-point program was started: Selection and registration of trees that expressed no visual symptoms of the serious types of virus diseases. Selecting and indexing apparently virus-free trees for latent or masked viruses that expressed no apparent symptoms. Making a source of desirable indexed budwood available to all nurserymen for establishing mother scion orchards. Initiating a certification program as the need for such a pro- gram became apparent. Tree Regisfration Oregon Agricultural Experiment Station Circular of Informa- tion 335, A Plan for Improving Oregon-Grown Fruit Tree Nursery Stock, was prepared and issued in March 1944. This circular outlined the need for a program of selecting virus-free sources of budwood, suggested a method by which this might be accomplished, and outlined steps to be followed by the nurserymen, the State Department of Agriculture, and Oregon Agricultural Experiment Station. A blank was included for nurserymen to fill out and return, giving the num- ber, variety, and location of stone fruit trees used for propagation. The State Department of Agriculture Nursery Inspection Service took an active part in helping nurserymen locate apparently virus- free trees to be considered for registration. The requests by the nurserymen for tree registrations were assembled and the trees listed were inspected by plant pathologists familiar with stone fruit virus diseases.The inspections usually were made just before harvest in order to check foliage and fruit for virus symptoms as well as trueness to variety.Sweet and sour cher- ries have received the major attention, since the virus situation in these stocks in Oregon was much more serious than in other stone fruit varieties.The following virus or virus-like diseases usually could be detected by visual symptoms and infected stock could be eliminated: cherry mottle leaf, albino, little cherry, rusty mottle, pink fruit, rasp leaf, sour cherry yellows, twisted leaf, black canker, pinto leaf, crinkle, and deep suture. These diseases are all described in the stone fruit handbook (1) and no descriptions are included here. Since most of the trees examined showed some evidence of virus infection, many of the trees registered as suitable for use showed faint mottles or a line pattern type of ring spot (Figure 1) which was assumed to be caused by the ring spot virus present in most cherry trees (5)(8).The nurserymen were encouraged to STONE FRUIT TREES FREE FROM VIRUS DISEASES 7 Figure 1.Leaves from sweet cherry showing evidence of virus infec- tion, probably the more severe strains of ring spot virus.A. Leaves showing the lace leaf or tatter leaf condition.B. Center leaf shows no visible virus effect by transmitted light while the two outer leaves show a mild mottle. keep searching for trees which did not show any evidence of virus infection. If the tree selected by the nurserymen showed no visual indica- tion of any of the serious virus-like diseases, the tree was given a registration number, and this number was painted on the trunk with 8 AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION BULLETIN 522 bright orange paint.The variety was represented by its first letter, such as B for Bing, A for Royal Ann (Napoleon), MD for May Duke, etc., and the trees were numbered in order of requests for registration.A number was used only once and became the code number by which the tree was recognized, for instance, AlO, L89, B260, etc.All registered trees were listed in order in a permanent book giving the following information: registration number, variety, location, owner of tree, address of owner, nursery making the appli- cation, who made the inspection, and date of registration.This same information was placed on an official tree registration card and sent to the nursery making the application. Any propagation wood taken from a tree was identified by tree code number and this number was placed at the first tree budded with that wood in the nursery row.Often the nurserymen would carry this number on their individual trees or bundles when they were sold. The tree was again inspected the following year and the nursery stock propagated from that tree was also examined.If either proved to be unsatisfactory on the second or subsequent inspections the num- ber was removed from the tree and the registration card was re- called.The policy has been to encourage nurserymen always to watch for isolated trees in the vicinity of their nurseries that might prove to be better for propagation work than the ones already regis- tered.This program has resulted in the registration of more than 500 different trees.Many of the first trees registered were soon cancelled because better performing trees were located.These reg- istered trees served as the source of scion and budwood for Oregon nurserymen from 1944 to 1948and some of the original trees are still being used. Indexing for Virus-Free Trees Many viruses exist in plants without showing any readily visible effect.This is true of several of the stone fruit viruses on some of their host plants.To determine the presence of such viruses some susceptible species or variety must be used which will exhibit definite symptoms when inoculated with these latent or hidden viruses.Such plants are called index hosts, and the process of testing for masked viruses has been called indexing for virus.In stone fruit indexing the primary virus concerned has been the ring spot virus, because it is a common contaminant in these plants and does not always exhibit visible symptoms.Peach, virus-free Montmorency, Prunus tonien- tosa, and the two varieties of flowering cherry Kwanzan and Shiro- fugen (Prunus serrulata) have been the common index host plants used for the ring spot virus.