The samples sent to Cornell Plant Diagnostic Lab to assessthe cost and response time for the lab diagnostics did not testpositive for fire blight. According to Cornell Plant DiagnosticLab, a large number of samples that are suspected of being fireblight from visual symptoms by growers and tree fruit extensionspecialists, did not test positive for fire blight in their fireblight tests. Similarly, interviews with expert professionals,who routinely test fire blight samples for research studies,indicated that a high number of visually identified fire blightinfected samples received by their lab from farmers and extensionspecialists were false positives