A list of historical virus detections in sweetpotato from Australia’s east coast – a decade of testing, 2004 to 2014

Abstract

The Australian sweetpotato industry has experienced remarkable growth in the last 16 years with growers currently marketing over 90,000 t annum-1 of fresh sweetpotatoes worth almost $ 100 million. This rapid increase in production is largely due to the development of a pathogen tested clean planting material scheme in the late 1990s and early 2000s, providing Australian growers with significantly improved quality planting material. More than 95% of Australian commercial sweetpotato production is now derived from pathogen tested (PT) planting material, mostly first generation. The pathogen tested seed scheme in Australia uses thermotherapy and meristem tip culture to remove viruses. Plants are then examined for viruses using herbaceous indexing with Ipomoea setosa and the NCM-ELISA kit from the International Potato Centre (CIP). Until 2013 further diagnostics using conventional polymerase chain reaction (PCR) were obtained as required. In late 2014, real time or quantitative (qPCR) was made available to the sweetpotato industry, initially for the identification of possible Begomovirus infections. A critical component of the Australian sweetpotato industry-s development, has been improving the understanding of viruses that may be of concern to the industry. This paper provides a summary of the sweetpotato virus detections made at Gatton Research Facility (GRF) between 2004 and 2014.