EVALUATION OF SELECTED METHODS OF PLANT-DISEASE DIAGNOSIS

Plant disease diagnosis has very exacting requirements which present a difficult challenge in a clinical laboratory, which may receive thousands of samples annually comprising perhaps hundreds of different pathogens. Methods used must be reliable and not overly exclusive, since a single plant may be coinfected by more than one pathogen. Modern methods of diagnosis such as microscopy, axenic culture, serology, double-stranded RNA analysis, nucleic acid probes and DNA amplification via the polymerase chain reaction are evaluated relative to the needs of a clinical plant disease laboratory.