Prof. Zhou at IPP-CAAS, China, and Dr. Aiming WANG at the London Research and Development Centre, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) co-edited a monograph entitled Current Research Topics in Plant Virology and the monograph was published by Springer International Publishing AG in June, 2016. We present here the Preface of the monograph for readers who may be interested in the content.

Preface

Viruses are submicroscopic, obligate intracellular parasites that infect all living organisms and exclusively live and multiplicate in their host cells. Since the discovery of the first virus tobacco mosaic virus in 1890s, over 5000 virus species have been documented in detail. Viral pathogens virtually infect all living organisms and cause significant losses including mortality, morbidity, and economic losses. In plants, viruses cause many economically important diseases in all parts of the world. Virus infection can reduce crop yields drastically and deteriorate crop quality. In some cases, viral pathogens become a limited factor to crop production. Genetic resistance is the most effective approach to the control of viral diseases. However, natural resistant resources are rare, and, if any, usually only confer resistance to a particular virus species or group of highly related species. Development of novel antiviral strategies relies on knowledge in plant virology research. In the past decade, various breakthroughs have led to the rapid advance of this subject.

This book is aimed to reviewing the advances of major aspects in plant virology. We were fortunately able to recruit over a dozen of international authorities to write this book. Topics covered in this book include RNA silencing and its suppression in plant virus infection (Chap. 1), virus replication mechanisms (Chap. 2), the association of cellular membranes with virus replication and movement (Chap. 3), plant genetic resistance to viruses (Chap. 4), viral cell-to-cell and long distance movement in plants (Chaps. 5 and 6), virus-induced ER stress (Chap. 7), virus diversity and evolution (Chap. 8), virus-vector interactions (Chap. 9), cross protection (Chap. 10), geminiviruses (Chap. 11), negative strand RNA viruses (Chap. 12), and viroids (Chap. 13). As next generation sequencing is revolutionizing the diagnosis of plant viral diseases, the last chapter of this book is specifically dedicated to this topic. Both the editors are extremely grateful to all the authors for accepting their invitation and making valuable contributions to this book. The editors would like to thank their families, friends, and colleagues for their encouragement and support, which is essential for the completion of this book. Finally, both the editors wish to express their sincere appreciation to Jacco Flipsen, Mariska van der Stigchel, and the other staff at Springer for their strong support and excellent professionalism during the publication of this book.

London, ON, Canada          Aiming Wang
Beijing, China         Xueping Zhou

The full text of this monograph can be downloaded at: http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-32919-2