Plant virus along the Silk Road.

A team led by Dr. Kazusato Oshima, Faculty of Agriculture, Saga University, is the first in the world to elucidate the spread pathways of plant pathogens in Eurasia. Turnip mosaic virus, a plant pathogen and an important pathogenic virus of cruciferous vegetables, was collected from the vast Eurasian continent over a quarter of a century, and its genome structure was comprehensively analyzed. It has been revealed that the virus has been spreading through various routes from west to east across the continent since the 17th century while repeating recombination and mutation, and also following the Silk Road, a former trade route.