Molecular Characterization and Diversity Analysis of Viruses Infecting Orchids Plants: Global Scenario

Orchid family is the largest plant family which consists of a diverse group of flowering plants, with blooms that are often colorful and fragrant. Orchids are commercially traded as ornamental plants, medicinal products, and food. Climates allows to grow most of the climatic environment like humid, subtropical or moderate climates allows to grow most of the orchids species. The worldwide commercial production of these ornamental plants is based on clonal propagation, which leads to proliferation of pathogens and disease outbreaks. The viruses infecting orchid plants have a big influence on the produce and the quality of bulbs, force flowers and are relentless intimidation to the propagation. To control the viral pathogens, specific diagnostic procedure is required which can be fulfilled by advanced molecular techniques. Viruses from orchid’s crop can be diagnosed by techniques such as electron microscopy (EM), immunosorbent electron microscopy (ISEM), enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), nucleic acid hybridization, PCR, RT-PCR, next-generation sequencing (NGS) techniques, etc. The expansion of NGS in detection of known and emergent viruses from infected material is proving to be a major breakthrough for the detection of asymptomatic and multiple viruses. Globally, studies on orchid reported that currently more than 60 viruses are known to infect orchid plants. This chapter describes latest research work on genome analysis and diversity study of viruses infecting orchid plants belonging to different virus groups.