Abstract

Emma Umunna Opara

Viruses are submicroscopic infectious particles that cause many important plant diseases. Plant viruses rarely come out of the plant and cannot be disseminated as such by wind or water, but they are being transmitted from plant to plant in a number of ways and by living organisms called vectors. This article attempts to show the relationship between Vectors and Viruses in host plant infection. It discusses the transmission of viruses by vectors from unhealthy host plants to healthy host plants to cause infection. Each successive step of vector-virus transmission is needed for transmission to be successful. Different modes of virus transmission are characterized based on the retention time, sites of retention, and internalization of virions by vectors. It goes further to discuss the specificity of transmission of a virus by a vector as a critical factor in vector-virus interaction. It concludes that transmission from host to host by vectors is an important step in the biological cycle of plant viruses to ensure their maintenance and survival. Therefore the control of virus vectors is an effective way of controlling viral diseases of crop to ensure sustainable productivity of crops