Abstract

This review summarizes the key findings from a long-term study of rice virus ecology in the southern Russian Far East, carried out at the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Laboratory of Virology of the Federal Scientific Centre of East Asia Terrestrial Biodiversity (formerly the Biology and Soil Science Institute until 2018). The isolated viral strains and pertinent data related to the study were deposited in the Russian Collection of Viruses of East Asia repository. From our investigations, we discovered that four phytoviruses in the area have the ability to infect rice plantings, namely: the Russian oat mosaic virus (Bunyavirales: Phenuiviridae, Tenuivirus), the rice stripe virus (Bunyavirales: Phenuiviridae, Tenuivirus), the rice spotted mosaic virus (the taxonomic status of this virus is still unknown), and probably the northern cereal mosaic virus (Mononegavirales: Rhabdoviridae, Cytorhabdovirus). The study also examined the signs of infection, the seasonality of the disease, native wild plants that serve as natural reservoirs, and the insect fauna that inhabits the rice field, which includes vectors of varying degrees of significance. Though absent from the Far East of Russia, as indicated in scientific literature on the outcomes of phytovirological monitoring in neighbouring territories, an additional 10 viruses (from the families Caulimoviridae, Phenuiviridae, Rhabdoviridae, Secoviridae, and Sedoreoviridae) pose a potential threat to the rice planting system in the region.