Virus Detection Technology: Becoming Too Good?

摘要

As our ability to detect virus and virus-like organisms in tree fruit and other plants increases, the concepts of clean plants and disease prevention become murky.AN INTERESTING CLASH between technology and clean plant certificationhas been brewing with real implications for the tree fruit industry. This revolves around recent improvements in technology to detect foreign DNA and RNA genetic materials in plants. These technologies, called next generation sequencing (NGS) or high-throughput sequencing (HTS) technologies, allow the detection of all virus and virus-like organisms in plants, whether they are pathogens, non-pathogens, or something halfway between.