Biotic stress and crop improvement

Biotic stress is one of the major environmental factors affecting plants. Viruses, fungi, bacteria, weeds, insects, and other pests and pathogens represent a major constraint to agricultural productivity and a serious threat to vegetable and grain crops. Plant protection against pathogens and pests is a commercially important issue and one of the main directions of researches. Almost half of new infectious diseases identified in plants during the past 10 years have a viral nature. The number and distribution areas of some plant viruses in Europe have been increasing rapidly during the past 35 years that caused big problems from an economic point of view. Viral diseases have also become a real threat for different cultivars of vegetables, grains, and other agricultural crops in our country. It causes extensive leaf yellowing, stem and leaf deformation, reducing the fruit quality, substantial yield loss, and shortening the lifecycle of crops. The probable cause of decay of virus-infected plants is not only the virus activity itself but also reduced tolerance to unfavorable environmental conditions. The identification of the viruses affecting plants and the study of the plant responses are very important for the better understanding of the plant–virus interactions and for developing the tendency to reduce the plant virus-associated risks in Azerbaijan. Therefore, the main goal of the present study is to identify the most widespread plant viruses in Azerbaijan using different molecular techniques and to evaluate some characteristics of plant response to viral stres