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redphal

Phal Virus Quandry

redphal
13 years ago

Just this year I started collecting phals--grocery stores, flower shows, mail order, garden centers. When I started I didn't know about how prevalent CymMV and ORSV viruses are in phals, and amassed a substantial collection (50+ plants) without doing any testing, except visual inspection and spraying. The phals are all healthy in appearance, from root to flower. I've repotted almost all of them to semi-hydro, and treat them with Physan 20 and other good stuff.

However. After reading on the forums about CymMV and ORSV, I got some of the Agdia strips in order to test some new phals I'd just bought. And the majority of the new phals, which I'd had quarantined, were infected with both viruses. Again, they were outwardly healthy, but I still returned the phals. I bought more tests, and started checking my main collection, but I have a *lot* of plants and it will take a lot more tests to get through every single one. And just from a quick sampling I found two out of three tested plants are infected.

So here's my quandry: do I try and weed out all the infected plants, knowing it could easily be half or more of them, for the sake of the uninfected plants? Or do I just accept that there are infected plants and ultimately accept a virused collection? I have no intention of doing any breeding or trading, these plants are just for my own enjoyment. But I do want healthy plants that will bloom again for me next fall, and I would feel just awful if the viruses ended up killing everything.

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