Surveillance and diagnosis of viruses and viroids in quarantine plant samples

Plant biosecurity surveillance and diagnostics of viral pathogens is hampered by the fact that current available molecular assays are laborious, time consuming, expensive and only able to detect a subset of known plant viruses/viroids. Imported plants into Australia spend up to two years in quarantine resulting in a drastic impact on Australian trade both economically and socially. Recent studies demonstrated the detection of viral pathogens in the small RNA fraction of plant species. This offers an unprecedented paradigm shift to detect all known and novel viruses/viroids in a single small RNA next generation sequencing experiment that is also more cost-effective than current indexed PCR assays.