Advances in Virus Research

Since the very earliest developments in agriculture, and probably even before then, diseases affecting crop plants have posed an ever-present, yet ever changing, threat to human survival. The Bible, for example, explicitly mentions blights, blasts, and mildew diseases of wheat. Not surprisingly, people sought to understand and mitigate the effects of disease on crop productivity, and many earlier cultures have sought divine aid in the fight against crop disease. The Romans, according to some historians, celebrated the festival of Robigalia: an attempt to mollify Robigus, the god thought to protect crops from disease, and his less