CMV virus inoculation, let's make it slay

Before doing this experiment, it has to be done in a crop plant, in a controlled atmosphere (temperature of 22 degrees, humidity, containment), of Cucumis melo during 7 to 10 days so you dispose of a large number of youth individuals. Then you choose between most healthy melon plants.

Image. 5.1. Montse Martin working on the
selection of healthy melon plants

Image 5.2. Mixing green
shots in the mortar

After doing the selection with everything prepared, you proceed to extract a huge amount of virus contained in a pumpkin plant which has been yet infected with CMV, as it grants more efectiveness in the inoculation. To extract the Cucumovirus, you have to cut with an scalpel the green shoots (that contain most of the virus) and letting it sit in a mortar, you mix this part of the plant with coal and a phosphate buffer, and finally we grind it all together.

Image 5.3. Rubbing the Cucumis melo crop

We rub the youth plants, which had been before treated with an abrasive, with our fingers in an slowly way, the finger is wet with the virus solution, hence it is absorbed into the Cucumis melo from the scars (made by the rub of the abrasive).

Image 5.4. Watering melon
plants after being rubbed

When this is finished you wait for more or less thirty seconds and water it so CMV that has not entered in the plant, and is remaining in the superficial part of the melon plants goes away.