Disease symptoms on Phalaenopsis- and (upcoming) lab-confirmed diagnosis

[estación seca]

Originally Posted by Ray

John must have been having a "low biorhythm day". Missed that fact that Camille is in Holland, and your gender.

Relatively speaking, those are minor mental glitches. The REAL faux pas - one I have a avoided, but did get to witness once - is commenting on a woman's pregnancy when it's actually just extra pounds.

At one place I worked a lady had delivered her baby several weeks earlier. A male co-worker who wasn't in the department often asked when she was due. That was a mistake.

[camille1585]

Good thing that I'm not paying for the tests, the routine lab is doing the virus testing so seems an internal bill to diagnostics. 5 samples, 5 viruses tested for would have cost me 400eur. The tests are underway, results should be ready sometime next week.

My colleagues in diagnostics asked for the usual suspects (CymMV and ORSV) along with TSWV, INSV (impatiens necrotic spot virus) and CMV (cucumber mosaic virus). The last 3 were added because mealy bugs are frequently vectors for those.

[camille1585]

I've had the test results sitting in my drawer, with the intention of posting them here.
The good news is that all my samples tested negative for all 5 viruses. The bad news is that orchid fleck virus is very possible, and likely according to the virologist, but they have neither the antibodies nor primers to test for it. Symptom development matches what I see. Young leaves go a long time without visible signs of injury, but on older leaves symptoms first appear in the mid part of the leaf, with circles and stripes. I wish I could test for it, it would break my heart to toss the irreplaceable orchids without the certainty of knowing if it's OFV.

The black spots/streaks are the bacterial pathogen Acidovorax cattleyae, and that I can do something about by increasing air movement.

[estación seca]

Has any work been done with heat treatment for OFV? I know some plants can be rid of some virus this way.

[camille1585]

Originally Posted by estación seca

Has any work been done with heat treatment for OFV? I know some plants can be rid of some virus this way.

I have no idea, I'll look into it.

One ray of hope is that the virologist colleague did say that OFV is mainly transmitted by mites. Unless I have an invasion of microscopic, non red type mites, it's been many years since I've had a mite problem. So I'm going to try something for the coming months. I read that a cinnamon steeped 70% isopropyl solution can be pretty effective at killing a number of diseases, and mites. So I'll wipe down all the leaves, and also improve culture by adding some fans for air movement, and using my lights again to supplement the poor level of winter daylight. If I see an improvement and no symptoms on the young leaves, then it would indicate cultural issues leading to disease rather than OFV.