Grains, trade and war in the multimodal transmission of Rice yellow mottle virus: An historical and phylogeographical retrospective
Innocent Ndikumana, Geoffrey Onaga, Agnès Pinel-Galzi, Pauline Rocu, Judith Hubert, Hassan Karakacha Wéré, Antony Adego, Mariam Nyongesa Wéré, Nils Poulicard, Maxime Hebrard, Simon Dellicour, Philippe Lemey, Erik Gilbert, Marie-José Dugué, François Chevenet, Paul Bastide

TL;DR
This study traces the spread of Rice yellow mottle virus in East Africa, linking it to historical rice cultivation, trade, and human activities like war.
Contribution
The study reveals unexpected human-driven pathways for RYMV dispersal, including wartime rice transport and seed exchange.
Findings
RYMV spread through caravan routes, seed exchanges, and wartime rice transport.
The virus emerged in the Eastern Arc Mountains and spread via contaminated rice seeds.
Human activities, including war and trade, significantly influenced RYMV dispersal.
Abstract
Rice yellow mottle virus (RYMV) is a major pathogen of rice in Africa. RYMV has a narrow host range limited to rice and a few related poaceae species. We explore the links between the spread of RYMV in East Africa and rice history since the second half of the 19th century. The phylogeography of RYMV in East Africa was reconstructed from coat protein gene sequences (ORF4) of 335 isolates sampled over two million square kilometers between 1966 and 2020. Dispersal patterns obtained from ORF2a and ORF2b, and full-length sequences converged to the same scenario. The following imprints of rice cultivation on RYMV epidemiology were unveiled. RYMV emerged in the middle of the 19th century in the Eastern Arc Mountains where slash-and-burn rice cultivation was practiced. Several spillovers from wild hosts to cultivated rice occurred. RYMV was then rapidly introduced into the nearby large rice…
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Taxonomy
TopicsPlant Virus Research Studies · Plant Parasitism and Resistance · Agricultural pest management studies
