Current phytosanitary requirements are not consistent among
countries, and testing seeds for export can be exorbitantly expensive,
particularly as some countries require as many as 20,000 seeds to be
tested per seed lot. Thus, understanding the frequency of seed infection
and transmission to seedlings for this pathogen is vital to informing
phytosanitary regulations. To this end we developed a RT-PCR assay to
detect PSTVd in tomato seedlings as well as a RT-qPCR assay to detect
PSTVd in tomato seeds in order to assess plant-to-seed and seed-toseedling
transmission for this economically important pathogen.