Disease caused by Tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV) brings serious production losses of cultivated tomato worldwide. In our previous study, two novel amino acid derivatives exerted satisfactory antiviral activities against TYLCV. In this study, the variation of TYLCV, the transcriptional expression level of Ty-1 and the enzyme activities of POD and PPO in tomato were monitored after treatment with two amino acid derivatives to illustrate the antiviral mechanism. The results showed the symptom severity caused by TYLCV was reduced significantly by two compounds and was associated with the inhibition of viral DNA level at the early stage. Among three levels of concentration, the highest inhibition rate of CNBF-His was 40.66% at 1000 mg/L, for CNBF-Asn, the highest inhibition rate was 36.26% at 2000 mg/L 30 days post-inoculation. Two compounds could also enhance the activities of PPO and POD and the transcriptional expression level of Ty-1 which correlates with plant resistance in tomato. In the field test, two compounds increased the yields of tomato and the maximum increase of yield was 37.66%. This is the first report of novel amino acid derivatives inducing resistance in tomato plant against TYLCV. It is suggested that amino acid derivatives have the potential to be an effective approach against TYLCV in tomato plant.