The Viral Threat in Cotton: How New and Emerging Technologies Accelerate Virus Identification and Virus Resistance Breeding

Cotton (Gossypium spp. L., Malvaceae) is the world's largest source of natural fibers. Virus outbreaks are fast and economically devasting regarding cotton. Identifying new viruses is challenging as virus symptoms usually mimic nutrient deficiency, insect damage, and auxin herbicide injury. Traditional viral identification methods are costly and time-consuming. Developing new resistant cotton lines to face viral threats has been slow until the recent use of molecular virology, genomics, new breeding techniques (NBT), remote sensing, and artificial intelligence (AI). This perspective article demonstrates rapid, sensitive, and cheap technologies to identify viral diseases and propose their use for virus resistance breeding.