Tomato cultivation: Plant twin viruses thrive with the help of their vector insects (smoke and powder lice).

Tomatoes are a popular food all over the world, and every tomato that comes to the table is a survivor of "super pests" that escape from the fields.
scientists have studied the field for more than 50 years and have a clearer understanding of the "battle of the mingles" in the field.
June 13
, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published online the latest findings of Professor Wang Xiaowei 's team from the Institute of Insect Sciences of Zhejiang University 's School of Agriculture , which found that a plant twin virus that kills tomatoes can double its spread by using the growth of its vector insect , smoke and dust lice .
this is the first time that the scientific community has found that whether plant viruses are transmitted by egg is closely related to the development stage of mesothic insects, providing a new perspective for studying the characteristics of egg transmission of other viruses.
nearly 30 years, a twin virus, the tomato jaundic leaf virus, has invaded more than 50 countries around the world, causing great harm to agricultural production.
Virus spread through eggs, a "secret channel", significantly enhances the efficiency of virus transmission and spread, "may be one of the important mechanisms for the rapid global invasion and serious harm of the tomato yellow leaf virus in the past 30 years," Wang said.
long been recognized by scientists as a way to spread the virus to healthy plants by feeding plants with poisonous tobacco powder lice.
in the past 50 years, a number of scientists have asked whether the virus will spread vertically between the "mother and child" of tobacco powder lice. However, most studies do not support the use of poisonous tobacco powder lice to pass twin viruses on eggs to their offspring into insects.
5 years ago, Wang Xiaowei's ph.D. student, Wei Jing, was curious, and she designed an experiment to breed smoke and powder lice of different insect age into insects to observe the toxicity of their offspring.
results are surprising: the virus "egg transmission" varies greatly from stage to stage.
After dissecting thousands of cigarette lice and trial and error, the team confirmed the fact that "the life cycle of tobacco powder lice is about 30 days," said Wang Xiaowei, the paper's communication author.
"Although newly hatched tobacco powder lice female worms can also lay eggs, their offspring are almost non-toxic."
"can effectively spread the virus vertically only if an insect already has a large number of mature eggs.
" means that some of the babies of cigarette powder lice are a poisonous "killer" from the first day of life.
Scientists have revealed a link between the twin virus and "super pests", which deepens our understanding of the occurrence of field pests and diseases, Wang Xiaowei said, "because the virus in the absence of its host plant environment, but also in its vector insects can quietly pass on, and then in the encounter of suitable host plants to launch a new round of attacks."
study suggests that field twin virus prevention and control strategies and methods may need to be significantly improved.
, it will also prompt countries around the world to improve quarantine methods for tobacco powder lice and twin viruses.
, there are currently about 1,000 known species of plant viruses, about two-thirds of which are mainly transmitted by vector insects.
twin viruses account for one-third of all plant viruses and are famous for their structure like two balls of connecting bodies, mainly transmitted through vector insect smoke and dust lice. Professor Liu Shusheng, one of the authors of the
paper, has found that healthy plants secrete certain toxins when they encounter pests, and when infected with the twin viruses, plant toxin secretion is inhibited, and tobacco lice are more likely to eat with impunity.
.