P. Panailidou, L. Lotos, Laboratory of Plant Pathology, School of Agriculture, Faculty of Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Environment, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 54124, Thessaloniki, Greece; A. Olmos, A.B. Ruiz-Garcia, F. Moran, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Agrarias, 46113 Moncada, Valencia, Spain; C.G. Orfanidou, C-L. Sassalou, N.I. Katis and V.I. Maliogka, Laboratory of Plant Pathology, School of Agriculture, Faculty of Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Environment, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 54124, Thessaloniki, Greece 

Santiago, Chile, April 9-12, 2018

It is a great pleasure for me to invite you to the 19^th Conference of the International Council for the Study of Virus and Virus-like Diseases of the Grapevine (ICVG), to be held in Santiago of Chile, on 9-12 of April, 2018. Its venue will be Santa Carolina Winery warehouse. We feel honored to host this meeting for the first time in South America, and hope that you will enjoy your staying in our beautiful city, and make of this meeting an excellent opportunity for presenting your research and establish networks. 

Introduction: Perennial crops, such as fruit trees, are infected by many viruses, which are transmitted through vegetative propagation and grafting of infected plant material. Some of these pathogens cause severe crop losses and often reduce the productive life of the orchards. Detection and characterization of these agents in fruit trees is challenging, however, during the last years, the wide application of high-throughput sequencing (HTS) technologies has significantly facilitated this task. In this review, we present recent advances in the discovery, detection, and characterization of fruit tree viruses and virus-like agents accomplished by HTS approaches. A high number of new viruses have been described in the last 5 years, some of them exhibiting novel genomic features that have led to the proposal of the creation of new genera, and the revision of the current virus taxonomy status. Interestingly, several of the newly identified viruses belong to virus genera previously unknown to infect fruit tree species (e.g., Fabavirus, Luteovirus) a fact that challenges our perspective of plant viruses in general. Finally, applied methodologies, including the use of different molecules as templates, as well as advantages and disadvantages and future directions of HTS in fruit tree virology are discussed