Needle in a haystack - Detecting low levels of viral RNA in plant tissues

 

The US horticulture industry suffers approximately $60 billion in losses each year as a result of viral pathogens. Detection of viruses is a critical priority to mitigate spread of diseases that threaten plant health, fruit yield and quality, and the industry economic bottom-line. The current standard methods for virus diagnostics are low-throughput and limited to detection of individual viruses with established sequence information. In contrast, next generation sequencing is capable of screening large numbers of samples for all viruses in a single workflow. NuPhY has been evaluating various approaches—including LGC, Biosearch Technologies' HybCap technology in conjunction with NGS—to develop broad-spectrum, high-throughput virus screening in horticultural crops.

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