Skip to main content
ARS Home » Northeast Area » Ithaca, New York » Robert W. Holley Center for Agriculture & Health » Emerging Pests and Pathogens Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #295600
Title: Continuous and emerging challenges of Potato virus Y in potato

Author
item KARASEV, ALEXANDER - University Of Idaho
item Gray, Stewart

Submitted to: Annual Review of Phytopathology
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 6/5/2013
Publication Date: 6/30/2013
Citation: Karasev, A., Gray, S.M. 2013. Continuous and emerging challenges of Potato virus Y in potato. Annual Review of Phytopathology. 51:571-586.

Interpretive Summary: Potato virus Y has become the number one disease issue for the U.S. seed potato industry and has the potential to become a major quality disease for the entire potato industry. Several new strains of the virus have emerged over the past decade and are rapidly spreading throughout all production areas. The reasons for this rapid evolution are still unknown, but many factors are being studied that are likely contributing to PVY emergence. This review summarizes the latest information on the genetics and classification of the emerging PVY strains as well as the current and developing information on the biology and management of the virus and the disease. Growers, processors, and state and federal inspection and regulatory agencies are desperate for information since this virus is regulated and incidence has significant implications on commerce and national and international movement of potato tubers. This is valuable information for diagnostic, regulatory and seed certification laboratories that need to quickly and accurately identify the PVY strains that will have the greatest impact on the potato crop. The information is valuable for growers who are attempting to minimize the spread of the virus into and within the crop.

Technical Abstract: Potato virus Y (PVY) is one of the oldest known plant viruses, and yet in the past 20 years it emerged in the U.S. as a relatively new and very serious problem in potato. The virus exists as a complex of strains that induce a wide variety of foliar and tuber symptoms leading to yield reduction and loss of tuber quality. PVY has displayed a distinct ability to evolve through accumulation of mutations, and more rapidly through recombination between different strains, adapting to new potato cultivars across different environments. Factors behind PVY emergence as a serious potato threat are not clear at the moment, and here an attempt is made to analyze various properties of the virus, its interactions with potato resistance genes, and with aphid vectors in order to explain this recent PVY spread in potato.