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.