A tobacco plant infected with tobacco mosaic virus Nigel Cattlin /Alamy
Warmer and wetter weather has increased the spread of plant viruses in the past few decades, and climate change is expected to result in more outbreaks in the future.
Erin Mordecai at Stanford University in California and her colleagues analysed the spread of viral pathogens in 5380 wild and agricultural plant populations across six continents from 1984 to 2019. They used data from dozens of previous studies that mainly focused on plant populations where some disease is typically present.
By analysing local temperature …
