International Trade and Local Effects of Viral and Bacterial Diseases in Ornamental Plants.

Since the 1950s, there have been major changes in the scope, value, and organization of the ornamental plant industry. With fewer individual producers and a strong trend toward consolidation and globalization, increasing quantities of diverse plant genera and species are being shipped internationally. Many more ornamentals are propagated vegetatively instead of by seed, further contributing to disease spread. These factors have led to global movement of pathogens to countries where they were not formerly known. The emergence of some previously undescribed pathogens has been facilitated by high-throughput sequencing, but biological studies are often lacking, so their roles in economic diseases are not yet known. Case studies of diseases in selected ornamentals discuss the factors involved in their spread, control measures to reduce their economic impact, and show some potential effects on agronomic crops. Advances in diagnostic techniques are discussed, and parallels are drawn to the international movement of human diseases. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Phytopathology , Volume 61 is September 2023. Please see https://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.