IAM Plant Biotech Unit
Plant Pathology Webpages



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FAIR 3889

Virus diseases

Phytoplasma diseases

Pathogen collection

Pathogen detection

Pathogen elimination


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Welcome to the IAM Plant Pathology Webpages


These pages are about viruses and phytoplasmas that infect apples, pears, plums, strawberries and numerous other wild or cultivated plants and that are of major concern by the European Plant Protection Organization and the European plant protection legislation (EC directive 2000/29/EC, 436 KB PDF-file).

In these pages we collect and present essential information (visual symptoms, host range, sequence information, currently available detection and elimination procedures) about each pathogen.

In a world of free trade and in an European Union with free movement of plant material, not only the detection of infected plant material - with the coherent consequence of its destruction - is important, but also the ways and means leading to the production of healthy planting material, which in the end is, what the growers should use increasingly for establishing new orchards.

The Plant Biotechnology Unit at the Institute of Applied Microbiology, University of Agricultural Sciences, Vienna, has extensive experience in the field of detection and elimination by in vitro methods of pome and stone fruit pathogens.

The Plant Pathology Unit at the Institute of Applied Microbiology was the cordinator of the European Union Project FAIR 3889 "Health certification of Rosaceous species based on disease-indexing of in vitro plants: Validation of diagnostics and diagnostic strategies.

In this project, the Plant Pathology Unit, with 7 partners, developed an in vitro reference collection of the most relevant pathogens affecting fruit trees. Protocols for detection and elimination were developed, and papers reporting the work were published.


The pages were created by Wolfgang Arthofer, Sabine Strommer, Veronika Hanzer, Duarte Mendonça, Richard Gölles, Stefan Brazda and Margit Laimer, the plant virology team at the IAM.

Phytopatology Team

We would like to thank


The project is supported by the European commission under the 4th Framework Programme. The content of these pages is the sole responsibility of its publishers. These pages in no way represent the views of the Commission or its services.



last updated November 7, 2001 by Siegfried.Huss