Detalle de: Plant virology: Alive and kicking!

The papers compiled in this issue are a sample of the work shown and discussed at the Association of Applied Biologists (AAB) conference “International Advances in Plant Virology 2019,” hold at Council for Agricultural Research and Economics, in Rome (Italy), on October 29–31, 2019, in conjunction with the final meeting of the EMERAMB (“Emergent viruses and virus vectors in Mediterranean Basin crops”) consortium. The conference was structured in two sessions of molecular plant–virus interactions, two sessions on epidemiology and evolution and one session on resistance and control. Each session was opened by a keynote speaker, including Kristiina Mäkinen (University of Helsinki, Finland), Fernando García-Arenal (Polytechnics University, Madrid, Spain), Miguel A. Aranda (CEBAS-CSIC, Murcia, Spain), Manfred Heinlein (IBMP-CNRS, Strasbourg, France) and Marilyne Uzest (University of Montpellier, France). In addition to keynote lectures, there were 41 other talks, all of them of excellent quality, and 58 posters were on permanent exhibition during the whole conference and visited and explained by presenting authors in two 2-hr sessions. There was an excellent blend of subjects and approaches, providing attendees with a very good view on the latest developments on fundamental and applied plant virology. Although the focus of the meeting was very applied, there was quite a significant representation of fundamental research on plant virology in the conference. Behind their apparent simplicity, plant viruses have an incredible capacity to modify their hosts' biological processes, including control of gene expression, macromolecular trafficking and transport, basal and induced stress defence mechanisms, and many other areas of the plant physiology. On their own, plant viruses are fascinating entities, having evolved an incredible array of smart strategies to express their genes from their very compact genomes. Thus, plant viruses are excellent study subjects, providing tools to analyse and dissect many aspects of the plant biology. Perhaps one of the more illuminating talks in this regard was that of Kristiina Mäkinen, who summarised her group's recent findings on the potyviral cellular cycle in an excellent presentation; in this journal issue, Mäkinen (2020) reviews the plant susceptibility genes to potyviruses identified to date and their functions, emphasising their potential application as targets for breeding resistance (Mäkinen, 2020). Interaction with the host is also the focus of two other papers in this issue, this time stressing the role of environmental factors influencing the host–virus interaction (Ssamula et al., 2020) or how mixed infections may radically change the phenotype of the interaction (Crespo, Robles, Ruiz, & Janssen, 2020). Plant viruses cause global and regional economic and societal losses, being responsible for a significant proportion of devastating emergent and re-emergent plant diseases. Rapid detection and characterisation of the virus(es) responsible for the diseases represents very often a significant challenge; the use of high throughput sequencing (HTS) technologies has been a breakthrough in this regard (Blawid, Silva, & Nagata, 2017), and plant virologists have quickly adopted HTS for virus discovery and characterisation. Indeed, this issue compiles four papers that make use of HTS to detect, discover and characterise viruses in grapevine (Chiapello et al., 2020), maize (Achon, Serrano, Clemente-Orta, & Barcelo, 2020), cherry trees (Přibylová, Lenz, Fránová, Koloniuk, & Špak, 2020), and aspen (von Bargen et al., 2020). Still, affordable and sensitive specific detection methods are needed; in this issue, Torre, Agüero, Gómez-Aix, and Aranda (2020) describe the setting up of quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction-based methods for virus detection in cucurbit seeds, and Iftikhar, Moyo, and Pappu (2020) depict the development of a specific and sensitive loop-mediated isothermal amplification-based method for detection of a caulimovirus in dahlia. Understanding epidemiological aspects of viruses and virus diseases is fundamental for disease control; this has been and will always be a very important area of research for virologists within the AAB. In this issue, two papers deal with the analysis of epidemiological aspects, including the description of turnip yellows virus epidemics in oilseed rape in England (Asiare-Bedako et al., 2020) and phylogenetic analysis of tomato spotted wilt virus in pepper in Italy (Fontana, Albanese, Manglli, Tomassoli, & Tiberini, 2020). To close the circle, McLeish, Fraile, and García-Arenal (2020) have written a very interesting and thought-provoking paper on forecasting plant virus disease risk, identifying what has been done and needs to be done in the future to build predictive models that efficiently describe and forecast virus disease spread (McLeish et al., 2020). Both the communications to the conference and the papers in this issue indicate that new ideas and knowledge, as well as the adoption of new technologies, are keeping plant virology kicking and alive, and ready to respond to the challenges posed by the global change. The “International Advances in Plant Virology 2021” Conference will take place in Dundee (Scotland, UK); the Virology group of the AAB will make its most to organise a conference as exciting and successful as the 2019 was; we are looking forward to seeing you there!