Abstract
Sweet potato feathery mottle virus (SPFMV) shares many biological and cytopathological characteristics with viruses in the potyvirus group. However, the native virion lengths for strains of SPFMV range from 810 to 865 nm. This is similar to the length attained by other potyvirus virions after reaction with divalent cations. In this paper we show that the SPFMV genome is an infective, polyadenylated, probably single-stranded RNA molecule with a molecular weight of 3.65 x 106 and that the coat protein has a molecular weight of 3.8 x 104. These properties also resemble those of potyviruses.