Nucleic acid-based assay for the diagnosis of viral pathogens

Many methods have been developed and applied to diagnose plant viruses. Some of these methods are biological (e.g. indexing on a susceptible plant genotype), others are serological (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay [ELISA] and lateral flow test carried out with either polyclonal antisera or monoclonal antibodies) or molecular (nucleic acid hybridization, PCR or real time PCR). Most of diagnostic methods are directed at the highly specific detection of an individual virus target that is known or presumed to occur (Bos, 1999). Therefore they could be more properly described as de-