Spain
September 15, 2021
>> El proyecto VIRTIGATION, financiado con fondos europeos, aborda las
enfermedades víricas en tomates y cucurbitáceas
>> El projecte VIRTIGATION, finançat per la Unió Europea, combat les malalties
víriques en tomàquet i cucurbitàcies
Tomato plants growing in a greenhouse in the Spanish region of Andalucía (Credit: TECNOVA Foundation)
The CSIC researcher at CRAG Juan José Lopez-Moya brings his expertise in whitefly transmission and mixed infections to the consortium
The EU-funded VIRTIGATION project is publicly launched today, introducing its website and first press release. This project, which will run for four years, aims to develop solutions against emerging viral diseases in tomato and cucurbits. The focus will be in begomoviruses and tobamoviruses, which are threatening tomato and cucurbits crops across the world, having already led to colossal losses ranging from 15% to devastating entire yields.
Currently, the most dangerous begomoviruses affecting tomatoes and cucurbits are Tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV) and Tomato leaf curl New Delhi virus (ToLCNDV), both transmitted by whiteflies. Since the early 1990s, TYLCV has been wreaking havoc in greenhouses and open fields in Spain and Italy, while ToLCNDV was detected for the first time in Europe in 2012, infecting zucchini in Spain. In recent years, another pathogen has emerged as a serious threat to tomato crops: the tobamovirus Tomato brown rugose fruit virus (ToBRFV), which is transmitted mechanically through, for example, wounds on plants. This tobamovirus has not only hit Southern Europe, but also Northern Europe: outbreaks have affected Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, France and Belgium.
Similar to the human SARS-CoV-2 virus, these plant viruses are not limited by European borders. Tomato and cucurbit crops were ravaged in EU neighboring countries and trade partners like Morocco, Israel and India, thereby making these plant viruses a global challenge. The EU-funded VIRTIGATION project aims to protect tomatoes and cucurbits from these viral diseases.
Bio-based innovations to reduce pesticides and crop losses
In response to the global threat that represent these begomoviruses and tobamoviruses, the VIRTIGATION project aims to vastly reduce tomato and cucurbit crop losses. Moreover, the project intends to cut in half, or even fully eliminate in some circumstances, the use of chemical pesticides to control plant viruses and their insect vectors. VIRTIGATION will propose and demonstrate several innovative bio-based solutions, which, alone or in combination, will target viruses and whiteflies transmitting diseases, both in tomato and cucurbit plants. The project will develop integrated pest management strategies, including plant vaccines based on cross-protection, deployment of natural viral resistance by classical breeding techniques, and application of biopesticides, like plant extracts, targeting viral insect vectors, and sustainable disinfection of contaminated soils and substrates.
Furthermore, VIRTIGATION strives to enable a deeper understanding of plant-virus-vector interactions, by considering the impacts caused by climate change. It will also develop advanced diagnostic tools like viral genome sequencing to enable the early detection of virus variants, and further identify conditions and factors leading to outbreaks. Finally, VIRTIGATION’s proposed solutions will be validated in industrially relevant field trials equivalent to Technology Readiness Level - TRL 5.
The VIRTIGATION consortium: 25 partners from 12 countries
VIRTIGATION brings together 25 partners from academia, industry, research & technology organizations, agricultural extension services and SMEs from 12 countries: Belgium, Spain, Luxembourg, UK, Italy, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Austria, Israel, Morocco and India. The consortium is coordinated by Hervé Vanderschuren, Professor of Tropical Horticulture, at the Department of Biosystems at the KU Leuven university in Belgium.
CRAG is one of the partners of the VIRTIGATION consortium. Juan José Lopez-Moya, CSIC researcher at CRAG, will bring his expertise in whitefly transmission and mixed viral infections to the project. He notes:
"We have been painfully aware during this pandemic times of the importance of the research efforts to better understand viruses, and eventually to control them. In addition to directly threatening human health, emerging pathogenic viruses might impact the economy when affect animals and plants. This is specially important for countries like Spain, where production of quality crops constitutes a major and highly dynamic sector. The project will address how highly damaging plant viruses can emerge, and explore innovative systems for their control (such as vaccination through cross-protection with attenuated strains, use of genetic resistance, interference with vector transmission...), testing them under controlled conditions and in commercial settings, and aiming to provide practical solutions to be implemented by growers. These ambitious objectives only can be fulfilled through collaboration between many researchers (virologists, entomologists, plant breeders...) and other stakeholders, including industrial partners, in a truly multinational effort."
The VIRTIGATION project has recieved funding from the European Union's Horizon H2020 research and Innovation programme under grant agreement No 101000570. https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101000570
Project website: www.virtigation.eu
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