The initial observation that HSVd-infected cucumber plants show an unexpected hyper-accumulation of rb-sRNAs prompted us to speculate about the possibility that, during infection, HSVd [as previously observed for a symptomatic variant of Peach latent mosaic viroid (49)] could interfere in a yet undetermined manner in the rRNA maturation process, and that the rb-sRNAs highly recovered from infected plants could be a product of the DCL-mediated degradation of aberrantly processed rRNAs. This evidence concerns the gene RB1 and infection.