Spatial metagenomics illuminates the impact of agriculture on the distribution and prevalence of plant viruses at the ecosystem scale

It has been widely speculated that agricultural intrusions into natural environments have promoted novel host-pathogen interactions and the emergence of new crop diseases, although even indirect evidence of this has remained elusive. There is presently no available data on the diversity, prevalence and distributions of plant-associated viruses at the agro-ecosystem scale. Using a spatially informed metagenomics approach, we have discovered 94 apparently novel plant-associated virus species in a minuscule fraction of the non-arid area of the Earth’s surface area (~40 Km2) encompassing farmland and natural environments. Besides emphasising how little is currently known about the diversity of plant-associated viruses, this approach provides the most convincing evidence yet of the impacts that agriculture has on their distribution and prevalence.