Recent Insights in Detection and Diagnosis of Plant Viruses Using Next-Generation Sequencing Technologies

Traditional approaches like immunodiagnostics or PCR targets the viruses that have historically been associated with known diseases. These tests may not result in an accurate reflection of the etiological status of the tested plant. However, new and robust techniques could help in knowing the proper etiology of disease complexes, identification of new viruses and give an idea about the frequency of viruses present in either infected or uninfected plant material. These technologies widely branded as next-generation/deep sequencing technologies (NGS) has broadened the contours in diagnostics and improved our knowledge of the viruses infecting plants. These technologies have become available at the inception of the 21st century and provided a highly efficient, robust, cheap, and fast sequencing platform ahead of the standard Sanger sequencing technologies. In plant virology, these technologies found universal scope in numerous areas, viz., detection, genome organization, 86characterization, discovery of novel viruses, replication, and transcription. Numerous sequencing technologies have widespread uses, capable of reading thousands to billions of DNA sequences per run. These technologies were new, more competitive and robust were commercialized in large scale. From these recent advances of major importance, it is anticipated that NGS technologies along with CRISPR-CAS will play a noteworthy role in the diagnosis and management of viral diseases in near future.