Impact of Abiotic Stresses on Plant Virus Transmission by Aphids

Abstract

Plants regularly encounter abiotic constraints, and plant response to stress has been a focus of research for decades. Given increasing global temperatures and elevated atmospheric CO2 levels and the occurrence of water stress episodes driven by climate change, plant biochemistry, in particular, plant defence responses, may be altered significantly. Environmental factors also have a wider impact, shaping viral transmission processes that rely on a complex set of interactions between, at least, the pathogen, the vector, and the host plant. This review considers how abiotic stresses influence the transmission and spread of plant viruses by aphid vectors, mainly through changes in host physiology status, and summarizes the latest findings in this research field. The direct effects of climate change and severe weather events that impact the feeding behaviour of insect vectors as well as the major traits (e.g., within-host accumulation, disease severity and transmission) of viral plant pathogens are discussed. Finally, the intrinsic capacity of viruses to react to environmental cues in planta and how this may influence viral transmission efficiency is summarized. The clear interaction between biotic (virus) and abiotic stresses is a risk that must be accounted for when modelling virus epidemiology under scenarios of climate change.

Effect of Banana Bunchy Top Virus on the Heat Shock Protein Genes of Pentalonia nigronervosa during Temperature Susceptibility and Its Effect on Virus Transmission

“…Transmission biology of vector-borne viruses is an important aspect that is instrumental to develop disease control strategies [16]. A recent review [51] highlighted the influence of abiotic stress on virus transmission, mainly by changes in the host and vector physiology status. The present experiment highlights the impact of thermal stress on the BBTV acquisition and transmission.…”

Impact of Temperature on Survival Rate, Fecundity, and Feeding Behavior of Two Aphids, Aphis gossypii and Acyrthosiphon gossypii, When Reared on Cotton

“…The xylem absorption time of Acyrthosiphon pisum (Harris) was increased to deal with high osmotic pressure of phloem sap under drought stress [ 25 ]. Because aphids vector many plant viruses [ 30 ], the details of aphid feeding behavior are important because any changes may affect the virus’ transmission rate [ 31 ]. Therefore, studies of feeding behavior of aphids under elevated temperature are helpful in predicting changes in the transmissibility of plant viruses.…”

Water deficit changes the relationships between epidemiological traits of Cauliflower mosaic virus across diverse Arabidopsis thaliana accessions

“…In the context of climate change, a number of studies have investigated vectored-transmission in contrasted abiotic environments [for review see 51 ]. WD applied to CaMV-source plants did not significantly impact CaMV transmission rate, except in four accessions.…”