| Are there lab tests to diagnose RRD? |
| No. There are no laboratory tests to diagnose RRD nor are any being developed . Until the "virus" is isolated and proven to be the cause of the disease, there can be no immunosorbant assay test. Diagnosis, at present, depends on visual examination by someone with experience. |
| We submitted the first plants that we saw with possible RRD to the Tennessee State Department of Agriculture for confirmation. After we had seen many, many RRD-sickened plants of different rose cultivars, we felt secure in our ability to recognize symptoms. |
| Not practical for the home gardener, but one way to confirm RRD if you don't trust your visual diagnosis is to graft some of the infected part of your plant onto clean 'R. Multiflora'. If in a few weeks it shows symptoms. you have RRD. What if it takes longer? A gardener should not leave an infected plant in any garden. What if the recipient of the graft never shows symptoms? Then the rose either didn't have RRD or the graft was unsuccessful in passing the pathogen to the test plant. Not all grafts take. |
| A standardized form from another state agriculture department reported a confirmation of RRD. There was a blank for "Test by" and three capital letters were written there. We asked about the test and found that those where the initials of the person who looked at the plant. (This was in early fall of 2000 and we were really hoping that there was a fool proof test.) Subsequent questions to the company AgDia who have developed and marketed many tests for plant viruses were answered by their having no plans to develop a test for RRD. |