Abstract
Blueberry and cranberry are fruit crops native to North America and they are well known for containing bioactive compounds that can benefit human health. Cultivation is expanding within North America and other parts of the world raising concern regarding distribution of existing viruses as well as the appearance of new viruses. Many of the known viruses of these crops are latent or asymptomatic in at least some cultivars. Diagnosis and detection procedures are often non-existent or unreliable. Whereas new viruses can move into cultivated fields from the wild, there is also the threat that devastating viruses can move into native stands of Vaccinium spp. or other native plants from cultivated fields. The aim of this paper is to highlight the importance of blueberry and cranberry viruses, focusing not only on those that are new but also those that are emerging as serious threats for production in North America and around the world.
Highlights
The genus Vaccinium belongs to the Ericaceae
This suggests the possibility that the symptoms observed in Michigan may be due to mixed infections. It has been more than 15 years since the last review of blueberry viruses [27]. In this period there have been new viruses and diseases described whereas additional information on the epidemiology of known viruses has accumulated, knowledge that we aimed to capture in this review
As with the case of other berry crops, blueberry production has expanded to new areas, in North America, the cradle of vaccinium production and around the world
Summary
The genus Vaccinium belongs to the Ericaceae (heath family). The family has more than 3,500 species growing in all latitudes, from the tropics to the polar regions. Because of the rapid increase in blueberry plantings in recent years, in many cases growers choose to propagate from field plants that could be harboring asymptomatic infections at the time cuttings were taken. This has led to the emergence of several diseases in new areas or to major increases in virus incidence where there was minimal virus presence [7]. This review aims to provide up-to-date knowledge of the viruses that infect blueberry and cranberry and give insight into the measures that need to be taken to control the spread of virus diseases and avoid virus epidemics, so as to be able to grow these crops in a sustainable and profitable environment. The structure of this review is primarily based on the mode of transmission of the viruses as this is the most important factor for the development of an efficient and effective management strategy for the viruses and the diseases they cause
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