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Review
. 2018 Nov 7;10(11):612.
doi: 10.3390/v10110612.

Viroid Diseases in Pome and Stone Fruit Trees and Koch's Postulates: A Critical Assessment

Francesco Di Serio  1 , Silvia Ambrós  2 , Teruo Sano  3 , Ricardo Flores  4 , Beatriz Navarro  5
Affiliations
Review

Viroid Diseases in Pome and Stone Fruit Trees and Koch's Postulates: A Critical Assessment

Francesco Di Serio et al. Viruses. .

Abstract

Composed of a naked circular non-protein-coding genomic RNA, counting only a few hundred nucleotides, viroids-the smallest infectious agents known so far-are able to replicate and move systemically in herbaceous and woody host plants, which concomitantly may develop specific diseases or remain symptomless. Several viroids have been reported to naturally infect pome and stone fruit trees, showing symptoms on leaves, fruits and/or bark. However, Koch's postulates required for establishing on firm grounds the viroid etiology of these diseases, have not been met in all instances. Here, pome and stone fruit tree diseases, conclusively proven to be caused by viroids, are reviewed, and the need to pay closer attention to fulfilling Koch's postulates is emphasized.

Keywords: ADFVd; AFCVd; AHVd; ASSVd; HSVd; PBCVd; PLMVd; symptoms; viroid pathogenesis; woody plants.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
(A) Symptoms induced by ASSVd on apple fruits cv. ‘Indo’ (Courtesy of J.C. Desvignes); (B) symptoms induced by ASSVd on apple fruits cv. ‘Starkrimson’ (Courtesy of J.C. Desvignes); (C) symptoms of pear fruit dimple induced by ASSVd on Japanese pear; (D) symptoms induced by ADFVd on apple fruits cv. ‘Starkrimson’ (Courtesy of J.C. Desvignes); (E) symptoms of fruit crinkle on apple fruit cv. ‘Orin’ induced by AFCVd; (F) symptoms of blister bark on cv. ‘Nero 26′ induced by AFCVd (Courtesy of D. Ito); (G) symptoms of dapple induced by HSV in plum (Courtesy of H.L. Sänger); (H) symptoms induced by PBCVd in pear cv. ‘A 20′ (Courtesy of J.C. Desvignes); (I) symptoms of severe albinism (calico) induced by PC-40 variant of PLMVd in leaves of the peach seedling GF-305; (J) symptoms of green mosaic induced by gds3 variant of PLMVd in leaves of the peach seedling GF-305.
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