A rapid, sensitive and inexpensive method for detection of grapevine red blotch virus without tissue extraction using...

Grapevine red blotch virus (GRBV) is an emerging virus of significant viticultural importance throughout North America. Here, we report the development of a simple protocol for point-of-use detection of GRBV. Extraction of nucleic acids is not required; instead, the whole intact plant can simply be pricked with a sterile pipette tip, which is then incubated in sterile distilled water to provide the sample template in a loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) reaction. This method is 10,000 times more sensitive than conventional PCR, costs under a dollar per sample, and can be completed from sampling to readout in just over half an hour.