Current knowledge on eriophyid-virus vectoring

Oldfield and Proeseler (1996) dealt with about a dozen of serious diseases of herbaceous and woody crop plants caused by viral agents vectored by eriophyid mites. Later, de Lillo and Skoracka (2010) shortly pointed out the progress on the knowledge concerning the virus-mite interactions which was suffering for obvious reasons related to the small size of the involved mites, their niche and the difficulties in managing them in biological assays and rearing.

Only mites of the family Eriophyidae, within the superfamily Eriophyoidea, have been demonstrated to be involved in the plant virus transmission and all of known vectoring mite species do not cause hypersensitive and lethal reactions in the pierced host plant tissues. Vice versa, species of the families Phytoptidae and Diptilomiopidae, included in the superfamily Eriophyoidea, have not been suspected or involved in virus transmission, yet.

Recent investigations in virology led to the description, discovery and suspicious of new eriophyid-borne viruses, and to the demonstration of diseases of mite-virus aetiology which were previously suspected. Therefore, taking in count the general progress in virological and molecular procedures, likewise the increase on biology and ethology knowledge of eriophyoids, the purpose of this review is to describe the current state of knowledge on the eriophyid and plant virus interactions, examining also methods and techniques applied on these studies, emphasizing needs as well as weak and strength points of this research line.