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ARS Home » Pacific West Area » Corvallis, Oregon » Horticultural Crops Research Unit » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #167863

Title: RECOMMENDED PROCEDURES FOR DETECTION OF VIRUSES OF SMALL FRUIT CROPS.

Author
item Martin, Robert

Submitted to: Acta Horticulturae
Publication Type: Proceedings
Publication Acceptance Date: 5/13/2004
Publication Date: 9/25/2004
Citation: Martin, R.R. 2004. Recommended procedures for detection of viruses of small fruit crops.. Acta Horticulturae. 656:222-234.

Interpretive Summary: Every three years, the International Working Group on Small Fruit Viruses of the International Society for Horticultural Sciences meets to discuss new developments in viruses of these crops. One of the outcomes of this meeting is to prepare a list of recommended test procedures for the viruses known to infect the small fruit crops, Strawberry, Raspberry, Blackberry, Blueberry, Currants and Hops. The information presented during the course of the meeting is used to update the the recommended test procedures for these crops. Quarantine, certification, and plant protection organizations use this information to determine which tests are acceptable for their respective programs. One of the observations at the meetings in 2003 in Spain was that there are many tests that have been developed, but not evaluated, in multiple laboratories or against many strains of a virus. It was decided that we needed a protocol to move these new tests from the research laboratory to applied programs.

Technical Abstract: The tables included in this document outline the procedures recommended for the detection of viruses of small fruit crops in the genera Fragaria, Humulus, Ribes, Rubus and Vaccinium. In cases where a test needs validation, it is recommended that an additional test be performed on the test plants. These tests that need validation have only been used on one or a few isolates of a virus. Before they can be recommended tests, they need to be evaluated on a broad range of isolates from multiple locations. In the case of polymerase chain reaction assays, it will be necessary to state primer sequences that have been shown to be useful for detecting a wide range of virus isolates when recommending a test. Only a subset of a virus sequence is likely to be highly conserved and suitable for detecting all strains of a virus. This is also true for monoclonal antibodies that will be recommended for ELISA tests. Some monoclonal antibodies will be strain specific as has been shown for tomato ringspot, tobacco streak, cucumber mosaic etc. In some cases, polyclonal antisera must be designated as well since strain specificity can be a problem with some polyclonal antibodies; this is notably so with many nepoviruses. A standard data set will be required in the future to have a test moved onto the recommended list.