Nanobiotechnology for efficient plum pox virus elimination from apricot plants

Metallic nanoparticles have antimicrobial, virucidal, and anticancer activities and have been widely applied in medicine. In plants, silver nanoparticles have been used as preventive treatments in the greenhouse to reduce viral titers and symptoms. This work investigates the effect of Argovit™ AgNP formulation on apricot plants infected with Plum pox virus or with Hop stunt viroid. Meristems were rescued from plants treated with different Argovit™ concentrations and two exposure times. Although viroid-free plants were not obtained, a very high efficiency in eliminating the sharka virus is reported with a maximum cleaning efficiency (75 %) after 8 weeks of exposure at 75 mg L^-1 AgNP. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that silver nanoparticles application is used, combined with meristem culture, to produce virus-free plants and opens a new path to the elimination of viruses from plants.