AbstractsBiology & Animal Science

This thesis describes the development of serological and nucleic acid based diagnostic methods for pea-seed borne mosaic virus (PSbMV), the isolation of specific effects on infected pea plants, the collection and biological comparison of new PSbMV isolates from Pakistan, the cloning and sequencing of specific parts of the genome of selected isolates, nucleotide and amino acid sequence comparisons between selected isolates, and the development of a ribonuclease protection assay (RPA) for identifying genomic differences among the PSbMV isolates. It is the first comparison of a range of geographically different isolates of PSbMV on the basis of both biological and molecular properties.