Marine natural products and plant virus control

Abstract Marine natural products (MNPs) have attracted more and more attention of scientists. There are a large number of exciting, unique and novel secondary metabolites in the vast ocean. MNPs have become a main source of discovering important drug leads with new biological mechanisms. On the other hand, plant viral diseases, also known as plant cancer, are the second largest plant diseases after plant fungal diseases, which has brought great impact on agricultural production. Chemotherapy is currently the most direct and effective way to control plant viral diseases. Along with the use of chemotherapies, there are also a series of problems, such as the emergence of plant viral resistance and excessive pesticide residues. In recent years, natural pesticides, as characterized by environmentally safe due to low residual, safe to nontarget organisms due to better specificity and not as susceptible to produce drug resistance due to diverse working ways, have gained more attention than ever before and exhibited great development potential. This review gives an overview of MNPs and their derivatives that have shown in vitro and/or in vivo potential as antiplant virus agents, with their mechanism of action whenever applicable.