Infectivity of Tobacco Mosaic Virus stored for Fifty Years in Extracted, ‘Unpreserved’ Plant Juice

Abstract

ALLARD¹ published a report on the sustained infectivity of tobacco mosaic virus in unpreserved plant extracts after storage for 28 years. Either the identical or similar material used by Allard to establish his infectivity record was recently made available to us by J. E. McMurtrey, jun. It consisted of jars of tobacco mosaic-virus-infected dried-leaf material and numerous bottles of plant juice from tobacco mosaic-virus-infected plants. Not all, but most, of the bottles of plant extract lacked air-tight stoppers and had lost moisture through evaporation until they contained only dried residues. These samples date back to 1914.