Study of CMV - plant - aphid interactions focusing on Myzus persicae in vegetable crops

Myzus persicae aphid is a very polyphagous pest found on hundreds of host plants including several vegetable crops. Its role as virus potential vector was cited for many viruses including the ones found in vegetable crops. Transmission efficiency of virus such as Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV), transmitted by M. persicae to vegetable crops is the most common model used in many researches. In a non-persistent manner, CMV particles bind on the top of aphid stylet and transmitted in a few minutes, with an efficiency affected by a number of factors, like virus strains, aphid species, source and recipient plant species, and plant species on which the aphid is maintained.
Management of vector-borne plant diseases has presented a challenge because of complex dynamics and interactions of host plants, vectors and viruses within natural environment. Lectins as defense proteins in plants are present in large quantities in storage organs and seeds that are especially vulnerable to pathogens or pest insects (Peumans and Van Damme, 1995). Numerous reports in recent years have shown that lectins are toxic to various pest insects belonging to economically important insects such as Lepidoptera, Coleoptera, Diptera or Hemiptera in genetic engineered plants or artificial diets with lectins, which negatively affected the performances of pest insects. In the last decades, some plant lectins were shown to be toxic particularly to several aphids.
Plant-aphid-virus interactions have been researched for several decades, and there are some important questions studied, and still being in process. Although there are reports on virus transmission, we focus on transmission efficiency affected by 8 geographic aphid species, virus strains and plant lectins, and finally we performed to get a better understanding of the virus-aphid interactions and to propose new insight of lectins in non-persistent virus transmission control in crop protection.