On the Trail of the Longest Plant RNA Virus: Citrus Tristeza Virus

Abstract

The devastating tristeza epidemic swept through South American citrus groves in the 1930s and subsequently spread to most citrus-growing regions worldwide, causing varying degrees of damage and prompting significant changes in citrus cultivation practices. The causal agent of the disease, citrus tristeza virus (CTV), belongs to the genus Closterovirus in the family Closteroviridae. CTV virions are approximately two microns long and possess the largest known positive-strand RNA genome in plants, spanning 19.3 kb. The history of tristeza disease and CTV's molecular biology and taxonomic relationships have been extensively reviewed in the scientific literature. This paper primarily focuses on the author's personal experiences with tristeza disease and its causal agent over the past six decades. The journey began during a period when biological indexing was the primary diagnostic tool. It later progressed through the isolation of purified CTV particles, which served as a practical diagnostic tool for CTV suppression efforts in Israel during the 1970s. However, biological indexing was first replaced by electron microscopy, followed by ELISA procedures; both were eventually abandoned after it was discovered that many ELISA-positive infections were caused by symptomless CTV isolates, even on trees grafted onto sour orange rootstocks. In retrospect, my work on CTV can be categorized into three main phases. It began with the biological phase, inherited from earlier generations of citrus virologists, followed by the isolation and partial characterization of CTV virions, and culminated in the genomic era. While we live in an age of remarkable biotechnological achievements, my recommendation for future CTV research is to integrate both biological and genomic approaches rather than viewing them as mutually exclusive. This is particularly important for economically significant pathogens such as CTV, which should be studied continuously as both biological agents and molecular pathogens.

Keywords: ELISA; VT strain of CTV; aphid transmission; closterovirus; defective RNA; double-stranded RNA; mild tristeza isolates; pathogen suppression; seedling yellows tristeza; transgenic resistance; tristeza history; virus isolation.