Simultaneous detection of potato viruses, PLRV, PVA, PVX and PVY from dormant potato tubers by TaqMan real-time RT-PCR.

The requirements of sprouting dormant potato tubers for biological or serological assays or RNA extraction for nucleic acid and PCR assays add to the cost of virus screening. Recently, cheaper, reliable and more rapid methods for the screening of potato tuber-seed pieces for viruses have been developed that do not require sprouted tubers for indexing, including TaqMan real-time RT-PCR. Although the assays are often designed for minimal time and reagent use, they still require a time-consuming and laborious RNA extraction step.