PVY (Potyviridae: potyvirus) is one of the most important potato virus affecting seed potato production and also it is transmitted non-persistently via aphids. For healthy seed potato production, a virus detection system is highly important in addition to aphid monitoring and control. To achieve this detection method, it need to fast and easy to use. About two decades ago RT-PCR based PVY detection method was developed. However that was very time consuming and has low sensitivity. Here, we developed an advanced PVY detection method which a uses the boiling extraction of the viral RNA from aphid stylet and amplification by specific primers located in the viral capsid protein gene. Therefore, it could directly synthesize cDNA of PVY viral capsid gene from extracted RNA of PVY using one-step RT-PCR method in very short time compared to previous methods due to the omission of RNA extraction step. We confirmed this PVY detection method using the two aphid species (Macrosiphum euphorbiae and Aphis gossypii) that known as PVY vectors. The efficiency of this PVY detection method was 60% to 80% from two the aphid species. Hence, this method could be potentially applied to virus free seed potato production programs.

The cotton aphid, Aphis gossypii (Glover), is one of the main pests in various vegetable crops due to insecticide resistance in Korea. Some insect pests noticed neonicotinoid insecticide resistance such as Nilaparvata lugens, Bemisia tabaci and Myzus persicae etc. and the major player which contributed for developing the resistance was over-expression of P450, particularly CPY6 family. However, A. gossypii was a unique case that they developed non-P450 dependent resistant mechanism. Previously we reported that two point mutations (RtoT in nicotinic acetylcholine receptor, nAChR, beta 1 subunit and RtoT with LtoS in a transcript variant) contribute to develop the imidacolprid resistance in A. gossypii. Moreover we surveyed the mutation(s) in various local field populations. Based on the 3D modeling, we hypothesize that RtoT mutation can reduce the imidacloprid sensitivity. A stretch of 33 amino acid was deleted in the N-terminal region of original transcript of nAChR beta 1 subunit that contained RtoT with LtoS mutations in resistant strain. Among the two transcripts, only original transcript differently expressed between imidacloprid susceptible and resistant strain (resistant ratio = 3,800). Six alpha subunit (1∼5, 7) transcript levels were not significantly different between two strains. Therefore mutation and down-regulation of nAChR beta 1 subunit is also associated with imidacloprid resistance in the A. gossypii.