The mission of this collection is to acquire and preserve plant viruses, antisera, and cloned viral nucleic acids and to distribute the characterised - authenticated - materials for reference and standardisation purposes. The division is utilising the infrastructure and logistics of the Federal Biological Research Centre for Agriculture and Forestry (BBA) providing excellent conditions for plant virus research. Although independent in its activities, the DSMZ Plant Virus Collection drives on continuous contributions and support, and on extensive scientific interaction with plant virologists of the Federal Research Centre.

The DSMZ plant virus collection is internationally oriented and serves the scientific community involved in virus research and public and private organisations working in the areas of production of virus-free plants, screening for virus resistance, and diagnosis of plant viruses in general. In order to pursue its tasks the division undertakes continuous research efforts in virus identification and characterisation, in the development of serological reagents for plant virus diagnosis, and in the molecular taxonomy and diagnosis of plant viruses.