To provide plants, in particular, virus resistant plants and methods for generating such plants, eukaryotic translation initiation factor variants and isoforms thereof, nucleic acid involved in the splicing of such variant factors, methods for generating plants resistant to viral infection and uses thereof.SOLUTION: An isolated variant of translation initiation factor of plant eukaryotic cell, 4E(eIF4E) or isoforms thereof (eIF(iso)4E)which is non-functional for a virus, is characterized in that a nucleic acid encoding the eIF4E or eIF(iso)4E is mis-spliced.SELECTED DRAWING: Figure 8