Application of FTA®Cards to Sample Microbial Plant Pathogens for PCR and RT-PCR

For the detection of microbial plant pathogens, like fungi, bacteria, viruses and viroids, methods based on nucleic acids have gained importance as the availability of sequence information increased. This requires well-established extraction procedures that are cheap, non-laborious, safe and reliable. The paper cards introduced by Flinders Technology Associates, acronym FTA (R) cards, offer a simple tool to sample and preserve nucleic acids from many kinds of biological specimen and have been already tested for their potential to sample and process several plant pathogens in PCR and RT-PCR. We have tested FTA cards for the sample preparation of a broader range of plant pathogens with different NA contents and subsequent amplification by PCR, RT-PCR as well as multiplex PCR.