Dr Palmiro Poltronieri is researcher at the Agrofood Department of the Italian National Research Council. He is co-founder of Biotecgen SME - a service company involved in European projects, such as RIBOREG, NANOMYC, ABSTRESS, and TOMGEM. He has also tutored researchers for another start up, Bioesplora, in the EU project TRANS-BIO. He is Associate Editor to BMC Research Notes and is editor-in-chief for Challenges, an MDPI journal. He holds a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biology from Verona University. His current interest is on abiotic stress response in roots of tolerant and sensitive chickpea varieties, on activation of the jasmonic acid synthesis, and in the biotic stress response in model plants. Professor Yiguo Hong is a scientist based at the College of Life and Environmental Sciences, Hangzhou Normal University, China. He has expertise in plant viruses and RNA silencing, having publications in international journals, such as PNAS, eLife and Nature Genetics. He serves as editors for several international journals such as Functional & Integrative Genomics. He also holds long-term visiting professorship at both University of Warwick and University of Worcester. His current research covers virus-plant interactions, RNA signaling in plant development, and development of virus technology in plant functional genomics and crop improvement.