Towards Safer Plant Genetic Resources through improved viral diagnostics – SafePGR

Biological Resources Centres (BRCs) of cultivated plants aim at distributing plant germplasm to the international community for research and development purposes. As such, they play a key role in providing breeding programmes with certified pathogen-free plant material. In European outermost tropical and sub-tropical regions, banana, sugarcane, root and tuber crops such as yam and sweet potato, garlic, vanilla, are the main crops maintained in BRCs, in Guadeloupe, Madeira and La Réunion. These crops, both dedicated to local market and export, reproduce vegetatively, and thus may not be sanitated via seed production, especially regarding numerous virus species whose prevalence is generally high in vegetatively propagated crops.
Sanitization methods exist for cleaning plants from viruses. They display various levels of effectiveness depending on crop species and viral pathogens. The successful implementation of these methods relies on the availability of reliable and reproducible diagnosis tests. However, diagnostics tools exist only for a limited number of viral species. In addition, it is now widely acknowledged that only a small part of the diversity of plant viruses is known, especially in tropical and subtropical crops. Considering that international bodies such as FAO recommend to exchange only virus-free germplasm, efforts are required to improve our knowledge of the diversity of plant viruses in order to establish and implement appropriate diagnostic tools allowing the safe movement of plant germplasm.
The general objective of the project is to improve our knowledge of the diversity of viruses infecting crops important to European outermost regions in order to allow their safe conservation and distribution by BRCs. The project aims at (i) undertaking diversity studies of viral biomes in targeted crops, using metagenome approaches, (ii) optimising diagnostic methods on known viruses of these crops, and (iii) developing innovative multipathogen diagnostic tools and methods based on deep-sequencing.
Stakeholders such as plant protection agencies and diagnostic laboratories will be involved in the implementation of the diagnostic tools and methods developed in the frame of project. Regional Councils, regional, national and European plant protection agencies will also be associated to the dissemination of data collected by the project, which may have profound practical implication on the germplasm conservation and exchange and quarantine pest lists.