A Novel Resistance Mechanism for Fighting Plant Virus Diseases to Ensure Food SecurityAug. 28, 2026

Virus diseases pose a global threat to agricultural crop production, human health, and animal health. Plant DNA viruses are among the most destructive diseases of staple food crops, vegetables, fiber crops and perennial commodities. These viruses can reduce yield and quality, and can even lead to complete crop failure during severe epidemics, especially for smallholder farmers in tropical and subtropical countries (Tatineni and Hein, 2023). Plant DNA viruses of the Geminiviridae genus are transmitted by whitefly insects. Climate change, rising temperatures, and the globalization of agriculture increase the risk of temporal and geographic insect-mediated virus transmission (Kvarnheden, 2026). An earlier study led by Prof. Wilhelm Gruissem at ETH Zurich reported that single mutations in the plant DNA replication enzyme, DNA polymerase delta 1 (POLD1), are responsible for resistance to geminivirus infections in cassava (Lim et al., 2023). Geminiviruses also use plant POLD1 to replicate their genomes. However, the effect of POLD1 mutant alleles on virus DNA replication remained unknown.

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