The use of Prunus rootstocks that are resistant to plum pox virus (PPV) is an important agronomic strategy to combat the spread of the Sharka disease in nurseries and orchards. Despite remarkable progress in developing stone fruit rootstocks to adapt to various stresses, breeding that ensures durable virus resistance has not yet been achieved. For this reason, the engineering of PPV resistant plants through genetic transformation is a very promising approach to control sharka disease. The aim of the present study is to produce transgenic plants of the clonal rootstock `Elita`, which is resistant to PPV using ribonucleic acid interference (RNAi) technology. The genetic construct containing the self-complementary fragments of the Plum pox virus coat protein (PPV-CP) gene sequence were used to induce the mechanism of post-transcriptional gene silencing to ensure virus resistance. Transgenic plants have been produced after agrobacterium-mediated transformation of in vitro explanted leaves. The results of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and Southern blotting analyses confirmed the stable genomic integration of the PPV-CP sense and antisense intronhairpin-RNA sequence. Th e functionality of the introduced expression cassette was confirmed by the activity of including the uidA gene into the transferring T-DNA. To our knowledge, this is the first interspecific plum rootstock produced by genetic engineering to achieve PPV resistance.

In stone fruit trees, resistance to Plum pox virus (PPV) can be achieved through the specific degradation of viral RNA by the mechanism of RNA interference (RNAi). Transgenic virus-resistant plants, however, raise serious biosafety concerns due to the insertion and expression of hairpin constructs that usually contain various selective foreign genes. Since a mature stone tree represents a combination of scion and rootstock, grafting commercial varieties onto transgenic virus-tolerant rootstocks is a possible approach to mitigate biosafety problems. The present study was aimed at answering the following question: To what extent are molecular RNAi silencing signals transmitted across graft junctions in transgrafted plum trees and how much does it affect PPV resistance in genetically modified (GM)/non-transgenic (NT) counterparts? Two combinations, NT:GM and GM:NT (scion:rootstock), were studied, with an emphasis on the first transgrafting scenario. Viral inoculation was carried out on either the scion or the rootstock. The interspecific rootstock `Elita` [(Prunus pumila L..P. salicina Lindl.)x(P. cerasifera Ehrh.)] was combined with cv. Startovaya (Prunus domestica L.) as a scion. Transgenic plum lines of both cultivars were transformed with a PPV-coat protein (CP)-derived intron-separate hairpin-RNA construct and displayed substantial viral resistance. High-throughput sequence data of small RNA (sRNA) pools indicated that the accumulation of construct-specific small interfering RNA (siRNA) in transgenic plum rootstock reached over 2 %. The elevated siRNA level enabled the resistance to PPV and blocked the movement of the virus through the GM tissues into the NT partner when the transgenic tissues were inoculated. At the same time, the mobile siRNA signal was not moved from the GM rootstock to the target NT tissue to a level sufficient to trigger silencing of PPV transcripts and provide reliable viral resistance. Th e lack of mobility of transgenederived siRNA molecules was accompanied by the transfer of various endogenous rootstock-specific siRNAs into the NT scion, indicating the exceptional transitivity failure of the studied RNAi signal. The results presented here indicate that transgrafting in woody fruit trees remains an unpredictable practice and needs further in-depth examination to deliver molecular silencing signals.

We developed an efficient system for agro-bacterial transformation of plum (Prunus domestica L.) leaf explants using the PMI/mannose and GFP selection system. Th e variety `Startovaya` was transformed using Agrobacterium tumefaciens strain CBE21 carrying the vector pNOV35SGFP. Leaf explants were placed onto a nutrient medium containing various concentrations and combinations of mannose and sucrose to develop an efficient selection system. Nine independent transgenic lines of plum plants were obtained on a regeneration medium containing 20 g/L sucrose and 15 g/L mannose. The highest transformation frequency (1.40 %) was produced using a delayed selection strategy. Starting from the 1st days after transformation and ending by regeneration of shoots from the transgenic callus, selection of transgenic cells was monitored by GFP fluorescence that allowed avoid ing formation of escapes. Integration of the manA and gfp transgenes was confi rmed by PCR and Southern blotting. On the whole, no direct correlation between the fluorescence level and the copy numbers of the transgenes was found in the present study, though the most intensive fluorescence was observed in line #9 with a single-copy insert. The difference of GFP expression level may have been caused by the integration site or by other factors such as DNA methylation and varying copy number. The described transformation protocol using a positive PMI/mannose system is an alternative selection system for production of transgenic plum plants without genes of antibiotic and herbicide resistance, and the use of leaf explants enables retention of variety traits of plum plants.

The method of RNA interference gene expression silencing was used to obtain Plum pox virus (PPV) resistant rootstock and commercial variety Startovaya.For this purpose, a vector with self-complementary sequences of the 578 bp eIF(iso)4G and eIF(iso)E genes fragment was created. The eIF(iso)4G and eIF(iso)E genes encodes factors of initiation of translation involved in the life cycle of a Plum pox virus. A strong promoter of the ribulose-1.5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (RuBisCo) gene was chosen to drive the expression of RNA interference hairpin in full and truncated variants. Successful genetic transformation of the 146-2 rootstock and variety Startovaya were carried out by A. tumefaciens CBE21 strain. Whole leaves from in vitro cultured shoots were used as an explant source. The nptII and hpt genes coding for neomycin II and hygromycin phosphotransferase were used as a plant-selectable markers. In our experiments, 5 independent transgenic lines of clonal rootstock and variety were obtained and acclimatized to greenhouse conditions. Th eir status was confirmed by PCR and Southern blot analyses. The transformation efficiency was 0.3-0.4 %. One of these lines was grafted with PPV-infected plum buds and its resistance was verified by ELISA. The use of a full-length gene promoter of the small subunit of ribulosobiephosphate carboxylase (RBCS) in the transformation of plants of the Starter variety led to a decrease in plant viability in the case of suppression of the eIF(iso)4E gene and ensured stability at least in the first year after inoculation in the case of suppression of the eIF(iso)4G gene.