Services
Plant health, virus indexing, and disease elimination
A service being added to the laboratory: testing, therapy and clean-stock programmes to produce pathogen-tested planting material for growers, breeders, nurseries and research partners in Australia. Until it is in place, we say which external testing a job needs.
Why plant health matters
Viruses and other systemic pathogens accumulate in vegetatively propagated plant material over successive generations, reducing vigour and yield. For perennial and clonally propagated crops — berries, citrus, bananas, ginger, stone fruit, and many emerging-industry species — sustained productivity depends on starting with pathogen-tested mother plants and maintaining clean-stock programmes.
Hort Innovation invests in clean-plant programmes across several levied horticulture industries, and the Mohsin et al. (2025) Australian avocado case study quantifies the economic benefit of clonal tissue-cultured planting material: shorter supply lead times, price premiums, and productivity gains.
Services
Virus indexing and pathogen testing
Targeted testing for viral, bacterial, and fungal pathogens of concern to specific crops. Tests are selected per species in line with Australian biosecurity priorities and industry clean-plant standards.
Disease elimination
Where a valuable cultivar is infected with a systemic pathogen, virus elimination is possible using meristem-tip culture, often combined with thermotherapy or chemotherapy. Recovered plantlets are re-indexed to confirm pathogen-free status before release.
Clean-stock programmes
Long-term maintenance of pathogen-tested mother plants in tissue culture, with scheduled re-indexing and multiplication on demand. Appropriate for breeders, variety holders, and industry clean-plant schemes.
Species and pathogens
Talk to us about the specific crop and the pathogens of concern. We confirm what we can do in the laboratory now, what is still being set up, and what external testing a job needs.
References
- Hort Innovation. Hort Innovation Strategy 2024–2026.
- Mohsin et al. (2025). Assessing the Sustainable Economic Benefits of Clonal Tissue Culture in Fruit-Tree Industries: A Scenario-Based Avocado Case Study in Australia. Advances in Agriculture. DOI
Also at MeristemLab: which plant-pathogen test answers which question from MeristemLab Diagnostics, and production-record software for tissue-culture labs.