Recent advances in characterization and diagnosis of stone fruit tree viruses

Around seventy-five viruses have been reported to infect stone fruits which heavily reduce its yield and fruit quality, resulting in major economic losses. Viruses are very contagious and have devastating consequences on the host plants. In most of the stone fruit cultivars the viral infection is mostly symptomless and has the capability to infect a wide range of hosts. The most critical part of controlling these stone fruit viruses is proper diagnosis. Traditional approaches are regarded insufficient for identifying plant viruses due to less precision, and accuracy. To close the existing gap, researchers created specific, sensitive, and effective molecular techniques as a diagnostic tool for plant virus detection, which have the potential to improve disease management decision-making by overcoming several limitations of traditional methods. Due to the high risk of continuous spread of these viruses and for routine diagnosis to avoid further infection, management strategies must be incorporated. With the development of molecular techniques for viral disease identification and characterization, it became attainable to gain an enhanced and detailed understanding of their prevalence and genomic organization. This is an updated review on the viruses of stone fruits, their modes of transmission, genome organization, detection, and diagnosis.