Improved detection of citrus psorosis virus using polyclonal and monoclonal antibodies

Abstract

Citrus psorosis is a serious and widespread disease associated with citrus psorosis virus (CPsV), a novel filamentous negative‐stranded virus in the genus Ophiovirus. Laborious and costly indexing on test plants has been the only routine diagnostic method available, but recently an antiserum usable in double antibody sandwich (DAS) ELISA has been prepared. Here, major improvements to the DAS‐ELISA protocol, a new purification method, and production of two monoclonal antibodies (mabs) to CPsV, an IgG and an IgM are reported. A highly sensitive triple antibody sandwich (TAS) ELISA making use of the mabs is described. In glasshouse citrus the homologous virus was still detectable at a tissue dilution of 1/6250 in DAS and at 1/31250 in TAS‐ELISA. Both the DAS and IgG mab‐TAS formats detected all CPsV isolates so far tested (from Argentina, Italy, Lebanon, Spain and the USA). A few isolates were not detected by the IgM mab.