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RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)
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The discovery of tomato spotted wilt virus

Andrew D. W. Geering https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5743-6804 A *
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A Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, Qld 4072, Australia.

* Correspondence to: a.geering@uq.edu.au

Historical Records of Australian Science https://doi.org/10.1071/HR23015
Published online: 5 September 2023

© 2023 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing on behalf of the Australian Academy of Science. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)

Abstract

The discovery of tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV) was an important finding in Australian science, involving a self-educated field naturalist and a small team of plant pathologists who had to work in relative academic isolation and with inadequate glasshouse facilities. After its discovery in Melbourne in 1915, TSWV rapidly spread throughout Australia and by 1929, it posed an existential threat to the tomato industry. To address this problem, a joint project between the Waite Agricultural Research Institute and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research was initiated in 1926. This collaboration, led by University of Adelaide plant pathologist Geoffrey Samuel, was initially turbulent but ultimately highly productive. Within an eight-year period, significant advances were made in understanding the aetiology of the disease, particularly by establishing that it was caused by a thrips-transmitted virus. Aspects of the epidemiology and control of the virus were also elucidated such as investigating alternative hosts of the virus. This research was made possible through substantial improvements in mechanical inoculation techniques.

Keywords: agriculture, alternative hosts, Charles Brittlebank, circulative transmission, CSIR, epidemiology, Geoffrey Samuel, history, plants, review, thrips, tospovirus, vector.

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