Plant Science 156 (2000) 259 – 260
Book review
www.elsevier.com/locate/plantsci
Handbook of Plant Virus Diseases by D.D. Sutic, R.E Ford, M.T Tosic, CRC Press, 1999, ISBN 0-8493-2302-9, hardcover 859 FF
With the libraries of virologists and their institu-tions seemingly under siege from encyclopaedias of various (overlapping) subjects, here is a book that is aimed at plant virologists, but with a rather different slant. This book is entitled ‘‘A Hand-book’’. As such, it is a catalogue of the diseases of crop plants that are induced by virus infection. The diseases are organised by crop type; there are chapters on food graminoid, forage feed, veg-etable, industrial, fruit tree, small fruit and grapevine crops. Most chapters are subdivided into particular crop headings (e.g. Barley, Couch Grass, Vetch, Lettuce, Peanut, Citrus, Raspberry). The intent of the book seems to be to draw together in one volume an outline of the informa-tion available about the very wide range of virus diseases that occur in many crop plants. The target audience suggested for the book is a range of professional pathologists, but I have the impres-sion that the treatment given is often more brief than would be wanted by such a specialist. For him or her, there are a number of specific volumes available. Rather, I think the target audience is those who are studying (or perhaps teaching) plant pathology and for whom a single volume contain-ing information on diverse crops would be a valu-able resource. Thus, the opinions expressed here are made with this audience in mind.
A particular strength of the book is its wide range (as mentioned above). Many crop types are covered, although, as is perhaps inevitable, there are some gaps. For example, there is no informa-tion about viruses of cassava or cotton, even though major virus-instigated epidemics are cur-rent in each of these crops. Also, but perhaps less surprising, is a lack of any mention of forest trees or lupins as crops. Some crops have perforce been
lumped together in order not to have too many categories. For example, ‘industrial crops’ means groundnut, potato, tobacco, sugar beet, sugarcane, and soybean (among others). Although all can be processed, certainly the first two crops are in many parts of the world sold to consumers without any form of industrial processing. The key conse-quence of this organization is that the primary entry criterion is the crop. Thus going to the book with a question concerning a virus found, for example, in maize crops will lead in adjacent sec-tions to other viruses of the crop, irrespective of their virological or taxonomic relationships. This is therefore in marked contrast with the several texts that exist in which virus classification is a framework and viruses of maize crops would be found in a variety of different locations. However, a disadvantage of the handbook style is that viruses from almost every genus will be found in a number, sometimes many, different locations in the book and either the descriptions must be re-peated or there is extensive use of cross-referencing, although a large index of about 1000 entries goes some way towards overcoming this problem.
A strength is that the book refers to some relatively obscure viruses and clearly has been based on the extensive experience of its three distinguished authors. It contains a detailed glos-sary, in particular of terms not often encountered by plant pathologists, and it is extensively refer-enced (\2000 sources). However, it is noticeable
that whereas for some fields there are few if any references to work after 1990, in other fields (e.g. groundnut crops) the references are much more up-to-date.
A striking idiosyncrasy of the book is that the authors have invented a new system of tions for disease and virus names. Most abbrevia-tions differ markedly from, and are usually more complex than, those in common use that are
Book re6iew
260
largely those recommended by ICTV. It seems highly unlikely that these abbreviations will be widely adopted and it is a shame not to have helped readers as much as possible by keeping to a more familiar system.
One disappointing feature of the book is that for many viruses the classification scheme de-scribed is many years out-of-date. This means that there are both incorrect names, such as calling
Potato mop-top 6irus and Beet necrotic yellow6ein 6irus tobamoviruses and incorrect taxonomy, such
as ‘Fiji disease reovirus’ when elsewhere the cor-rect genus (Fiji6irus) is used forMaize rough dwarf 6irus. Yet in some parts of the book (e.g. viruses of
peanut crops) the authors have sections in which the very latest 1998/1999 classification is used. This unevenness is a pity, better would have been to fix everything as it was in one fairly recent version, such as the 1995 scheme of the Sixth ICTV Report.
The other disappointment in the book is per-haps a consequence of trying to control the cost of the book; it costs $130 and is 584 pages in length. This is that the illustrations are all in black and
white, and often of indifferent quality. This in-evitably decreases the value of pictures of the symptoms elicited by different viruses. And in pathology, symptoms are often key discriminatory features.
In summary, this book is a brave attempt to counter the current practice in books about virus diseases of using a virological focus and describing the disease elicited as an aspect of the biology of the virus. Perhaps one can expect that in future random access database formats will be used for this type of information, and that this will make books and concerns about how information is organised in them obsolete. But for now, text-books remain and this book is fundamentally a pathologists’ textbook with its focus firmly on the host crop plant.
M.A. Mayo
Scottish Crop Research Institute,
In6ergowrie,
Dundee DD2 5DA, UK
E-mail: m.mayo@scri.sari.ac.uk
