By Kristi Waterworth There are a lot of little tiny creatures that go bump in the night, from fungal pathogens to bacteria and viruses, most gardeners have at least a passing familiarity with the monsters that wait to destroy their gardens. It’s a battleground and sometimes you’re not really sure who is winning. Well, here’s the bad news. There’s another class of critters, the viroids, running amok in the microscopic world, but they’re much less commonly mentioned. In fact, many diseases we attribute to plant viruses are actually caused by viroids. So kick back, and let us tell you about one more terror of the garden world. What is a Viroid? Viroids are very similar to the viruses you might have studied in biology class. They are incredibly simple organisms that barely meet the criteria for life, but manage somehow to reproduce and cause problems everywhere they go. Unlike viruses,
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