Viruses cause significant yield and quality losses in a wide variety of cultivated crops. Hence, the detection and identification of viruses is a crucial facet of successful crop production and of great significance in terms of world food security. Whilst the adoption of molecular techniques such as RT-PCR has increased the speed and accuracy of viral diagnostics, such techniques only allow the...

T he International Committee for the Taxonomy of Viruses recognized a global total of about 2,000 species of viruses as of 2005 [1]. However, data on viruses that infect terrestrial organisms, including plants, are sparse, and recent sequencing of samples from marine environments for viruses suggests that 2,000 is a gross underestimate of the total number of viral species on earth [2]. In addit...

Viruses are microbes that have high economic impacts on the ecosystem. Widely spread by humans, plant viruses infect not only crops but also wild species. There is neither a cure nor treatment against viruses. While chemists developed further research of inefficient curative products, relevant concept based sanitary measures consistently valuable. In this context, two major strategies remain in...