Aphid transmission of plant viruses

A majority of plant viruses are transmitted between hosts by insect vectors, and it is often important to use insect transmission in the laboratory to maintain virus isolates or to study virus-vector-plant interactions. Although many of these viruses can also be mechanically transmitted in the laboratory using infected sap, maintenance by mechanical transmission can often lead to changes in the virus, either minor changes in gene sequences or, in some cases, major deletions of genome sequences. These can affect both virus-vector and virus-host interactions. This unit describes some simple and practical methods for conducting virus transmission experiments using sap-sucking insects.