Fundamental Aspects of Plant Viruses-An Overview on Focus Issue Articles.

Given the importance of and rapid research progress in plant virology in recent years, this Focus Issue broadly emphasizes advances in fundamental aspects of virus infection cycles and epidemiology. This Focus Issue comprises three review articles and 18 research articles. The research articles cover broad research areas on the identification of novel viruses, the development of detection methods, reverse genetics systems and functional genomics for plant viruses, vector and seed transmission studies, viral population studies, virus-virus interactions and their effect on vector transmission, and management strategies of viral diseases. The three review articles discuss recent developments in application of prokaryotic clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats/CRISPR-associated genes (CRISPR/Cas) technology for plant virus resistance, mixed viral infections and their role in disease synergism and cross-protection, and viral transmission by whiteflies. The following briefly summarizes the articles appearing in this Focus Issue.