Because they have been implicated in the decline of bees, the EU decided to ban the use of neonicotinoid insecticides in 2018. A typical use of these products was the pre-treatment of field crop seeds to protect the emerging seedling from aphid feeding, which transmits viruses to the plant, with severe potential yield losses as a consequence. Climate change exacerbates this problem, because even small increases in temperature increase the number of aphids spreading the disease. As a consequence, substantial yield losses are predicted in the EU. Growing resistant varieties is the most sustainable way to avoid such yield losses. Here we propose to apply a novel biochemical approach to identify virus susceptibility factors. Susceptibility factors are those plant factors that are hijacked by the virus to infect, replicate and spread in the plant. By inactivating or modifying these factors, the plant can be brought outside of the host range of the virus. Because most plant viruses consist of an RNA genome, plant susceptibility factors often have the capacity to physically interact with RNA. Therefore, we propose to identify the RNA binding proteins that physically interact with the viral genome in vivo. Identifying such proteins based on their capability to interact with RNA has become possible through recent developments in the RNA-protein field and in the Geuten group these methods have been combined into new purification strategies and applied to plants. The identification of virus susceptibility genes is of general interest to sustainable agriculture.