Global Dimensions of Plant Virus Diseases: Current Status and Future Perspectives

Abstract

Viral diseases provide a major challenge to twenty-first century agriculture worldwide. Climate change and human population pressures are driving rapid alterations in agricultural practices and cropping systems that favor destructive viral disease outbreaks. Such outbreaks are strikingly apparent in subsistence agriculture in food-insecure regions. Agricultural globalization and international trade are spreading viruses and their vectors to new geographical regions with unexpected consequences for food production and natural ecosystems. Due to the varying epidemiological characteristics of diverent viral pathosystems, there is no one-size-fits-all approach toward mitigating negative viral disease impacts on diverse agroecological production systems. Advances in scientific understanding of virus pathosystems, rapid technological innovation, innovative communication strategies, and global scientific networks provide opportunities to build epidemiologic intelligence of virus threats to crop production and global food security. A paradigm shift toward deploying integrated, smart, and eco-friendly strategies is required to advance virus disease management in diverse agricultural cropping systems.

The Potyviruses: An Evolutionary Synthesis Is Emerging

“…This is a biosecurity term that refers to situations where genetically similar nt sequences occur among populations of the same virus obtained from infected plants growing in different countries [14]. In studies with potyvirus isolates from infected crops in Northern Australia and nearby countries ET and PNG, genetic connectivity was demonstrated in three instances.…”

“…Regardless, there are many records of crop potyviruses being found that could only be logically explained by seed transmission; indeed, it is likely that potyviruses are more frequently seed-borne than published records suggest perhaps because inadequate numbers of seeds were tested [148]. There are many examples of potyviruses being spread from one part of the world to another by the international seed trade [14,16]. Moreover, sowing potyvirus-infected seeds results in multiple infection foci consisting of infected seedlings scattered at random throughout crops.…”

Potato virus Y and Potato leafroll virus management under climate change in sub-Saharan Africa

“…Apart from maximising soil and water conservation, integration of a variety of existing and innovative emerging strategies is likely to be required to cope with increasing uncertainty, and variable rainfall and temperatures. 10,50 General reviews of plant virus management strategies can be found in Jones and Naidu 36 and Kreuze et al 20 Radcliffe and Ragsdale 31 and Dupuis et al 28 reviewed management strategies for PVY and Radcliffe and Ragsdale 31 for PLRV. The following provides a brief overview of management options with emphasis on sub-Saharan Africa.…”

“…Climate variability and climate change as well as agricultural changes (including introduction of new genotypes, germplasm movement and cultural intensification) add to the intricacy of the already complex virusinsect vector-plant-environment interactions. 32,33 The impact of climate change on plant viruses has been recently reviewed by Islam et al 33 , Jones 34,35 , Jones and Naidu 36 , and Trebicki 37 .…”

RNAseq Analysis of Rhizomania-Infected Sugar Beet Provides the First Genome Sequence of Beet Necrotic Yellow Vein Virus from the USA and Identifies a Novel Alphanecrovirus and Putative Satellite Viruses

“…The increasing globalization of food and other commodities has resulted in greater exposure of crops to historical and emerging pests and diseases, including viruses [ 1 , 2 ]. Within a pathosystem, novel pathogen variants acting alone or in combination may arise to compromise existing resistance in the crop [ 3 , 4 , 5 ].…”