Plant viruses are viruses that affect plants. Like all other viruses, plant viruses are obligate intracellular parasites that do not have the molecular machinery to replicate without a host. Plant viruses are pathogenic to higher plants. To transmit from one plant to another and from one plant cell to another, plant viruses must use strategies that are usually different from animal viruses. Plants do not move, and so plant-to-plant transmission usually involves vectors (such as insects). Plant cells are surrounded by solid cell walls, therefore transport through plasmodesmata is the preferred path for virions to move between plant cells. Plants probably have specialized mechanisms for transporting mRNAs through plasmodesmata, and these mechanisms are thought to be used by RNA viruses to spread from one cell to another.

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