SUMMARYRed clover necrotic mosaic virus (RCNMV) has two RNA species of mol. wt. about 1.5 x 106 (RNA 1) and 0.5 × 106 (RNA 2). An English strain (H) and a Czechoslovakian strain (TpM-34)of RCNMV could be distinguished serologically, by solid-phase RNA hybridization analysis (Northern blotting) and by the symptoms they induced in cowpea. Studies of pseudorecombinants, formed following inoculation of plants with heterologous combinations of the RNA species of each strain, showed that RNA 2 determines the morphology of lesions induced by the isolates in cowpea and their ability to invade the plants systemically.Red clover necrotic mosaic virus (RCNMV) belongs to the dianthovirus group (Matthews, 1982), members of which are characterized by isometric particles 27 to 35 nm in diameter, a genome composed of two single-stranded RNA molecules, RNA 1 (mol. wt. 1.35 x 106 to 1.55 X 106) and RNA 2 (mol. wt. 0.5 × 106 to 0.6 x 106), both of which are required for infectivity, and a single capsid polypeptide species, mol. wt. 38 000 to 41000, encoded by RNA 1 (Hollings & Stone, 1977;Dodds et al., 1977; Gould et al., 1981 ;Okuno et al., 1983;Morris-Krsinich et al., 1983). The properties of pseudorecombinants formed between RCNMV and two other dianthoviruses, sweet clover necrotic mosaic virus and clover primary leaf necrosis virus, indicated that symptom type in several plant species was determined by RNA 1 or by interaction between RNA 1 and RNA 2 (Okuno et al., 1983). We now describe two properties of RCNMV which are determined primarily by RNA 2.English isolate H and Czechoslovakian isolate TpM-34 of RCNMV (Musil, 1969;Hollings & Stone, 1977;Musil & Gallo, 1982) (kindly provided by Drs A. A. Brunt and O. M. Stone) were each subjected to three cycles of single lesion isolation in Chenopodium quinoa to obtain strains as homogeneous as possible. The viruses were propagated in Phaseolus vulgaris (French bean) cv.'The Prince' (Hollings & Stone, 1977) and extracted and purified by differential and sucrose density gradient centrifugations (Gould et al., 1981). Double immunodiffusion analysis of virus particles in 1 ~o agarose gels was as described by Buck et al. (1981). Rabbit antisera to the two virus strains were kindly provided by Dr A. A. Brunt. Capsid polypeptide species were analysed by SDS-PAGE (Laemmli, 1970). RNA was isolated from virus particles by phenol/SDS extraction (Okuno et al., 1983) and the two species were separated by two cycles of centrifugation in sucrose/formamide gradients. Virus RNA in buffered 85 ~ formamide (85 vol. of deionized formamide mixed with 15 vol. 10 mM-Tris-HC1, 1 mM-EDTA, pH 7-5) was heatdenatured (60 °C, 3 min), then cooled to 20 °C and layered onto a 5 ml linear gradient of 2 to 10~ (w/v) sucrose in buffered 85~o formamide. Gradients were centrifuged in a Beckman SW50.1 rotor at 40000 r.p.m, for 17 h at 20°C and then 0.1 ml fractions were collected from the bottom of the tubes. RNA in each fraction was recovered by precipitation with 2.5 vol. ethanol and analysed, after glyoxalation, by el...