Geometagenomics illuminates the impact of agriculture on the distribution and prevalence of plant viruses at the ecosystem scale.

ABSTRACT: Disease emergence events regularly result from human activities such as agriculture, which frequently brings large populations of genetically uniform hosts into contact with potential pathogens. Although viruses cause nearly 50% of emerging plant diseases, there is little systematic information about virus distribution across agro-ecological interfaces and large gaps in understanding of virus diversity in nature. Here we applied a novel landscape-scale geometagenomics approach to examine relationships between agricultural land use and distributions of plant-associated viruses in two Mediterranean-climate biodiversity hotspots (Western Cape region of South Africa and Rhône river delta region of France). In total, we analysed 1725 geo-referenced plant samples collected over two years from 4.

SUBMITTER: Bernardo P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5739011 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature