Dear Colleagues,

Plant viruses pose a continuous and serious constraint on both the yield and quality of crops worldwide. Globalization and climate change are also providing opportunities for new viruses to emerge and spread regularly, and thus food security is constantly challenged. Plant virus epidemiology studies the rates of temporal and spatial change of viral disease in populations, and determines factors underlying change. Here, transmission is a key determining factor and often depends on the interactions between viruses, host plants, and vectors. Developments in sequencing technology, nucleic acid amplification techniques and risk modelling approaches offer opportunities to confront these increasing risks. High-throughput sequencing-based surveillance approaches can provide information to better understand the impact of plant viruses on crops, supporting the development of more targeted field and lab-based diagnostic tools. Today, the control of viral disease involves novel integrated management strategies with new production practices, genetic markers for rapid screening for resistance, new resistant genes that are incorporated into existing cultivars or into new cultivars, vector management, and virus certification programs. CRISPR-based genome editing is used for generating resistance to a wide range of DNA and RNA viruses. Susceptibility genes are identified that will likely enhance the utility of CRISPR in making susceptible crops become resistant. This Special Issue of Plants will highlight novel techniques and methods used to improve our understanding of plant virus epidemics and to develop better ways to control these viruses.

Dr. Dirk Janssen
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Plants is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• plant virus
• epidemiology
• modelling
• vector
• high-throughput sequencing
• integrated disease management
• resistance
• crop breeding
• CRISPR
• susceptibility