Dr VK Baranwal, National Professor, Division of Plant Pathology, Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), New Delhi has stressed on procuring certified seeds and planting materials only to check seed borne harmful viruses and ensure higher production and productivity. Underlining the importance of using advanced tools and techniques for virus screening, he said prevention is always better than cure.
He was delivering an invited lecture on ‘Diagnosis and management of viral diseases using modern diagnostics’ at Birsa Agricultural University (BAU) on Saturday evening. Dr Baranwal said seed treatment and mulching are effective techniques for checking viruses and air borne insects in vegetable crops because even high temperatures are unable to check viruses.
He said over 10 thousand viruses have been recognised by research institutes across the globe out of which nearly 4000 are plant viruses. These viruses are transmitted horizontally and vertically through vectors and move with hosts like seed and propagation material. Many viruses like tobacco mosaic virus move through contact and cause devastation for farmers.
He also outlined the innovations in plant virus diagnostics, challenges in plant virus detection, methods used for diagnosis, etiology of emerging rice diseases and management of viral diseases.
Enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) are two major breakthrough methods developed during last 5 decades in diagnosis and detection and routine analysis of single or a few species of viruses. Plants can have multiple viral infections, can damage the plants and insects but don’t transmit to human being. Sequencing is an ultimate tool for detection and characterization of known/ unknown viruses.
US has stringent laws for management and control of plant viruses and even if one sample in lot size of 3000 is found infected, they discard the whole lot. Any diagnostic programme without proper infrastructure supported by technically qualified manpower will not succeed, he asserted. The Government of India has made a budgetary allocation of Rs 1800 crores during current fiscal for clean plant programme and Advanced Centre for Plant Virology, New Delhi is coordinating and guiding the management programme, Baranwal added.
BAU Vice Chancellor Dr SC Dubey chaired the event.
