Development of an immunochromatographic strip test for rapid detection of lily symptomless virus

•We developed a rapid ICS test to detect lily symptomless virus.•The detection limit was 6.0×10−8mg/mL for lily symptomless virus.•The ICS test was equal to the sensitivity of a quadruplex RT-PCR assay.•The specificity and sensitivity of ICS were 98.6% and 100%, respectively.•There was significant agreement (κ=0.983) between ICS and quadruplex RT-PCR tests. A rapid immunochromatographic strip (ICS) test for specific detection of lily symptomless virus (LSV) was developed. The test is based on a double-antibody sandwich format and employs two distinct anti-LSV polyclonal antibodies (IgG1 and IgG2). The first antibody, IgG1 was used as the detection antibody conjugated to colloidal gold and the second antibody, IgG2 was used to as the capture antibody at the test line. The performance of the ICS test was evaluated and the results obtained were compared with a quadruplex RT-PCR assay. When serial dilutions of purified LSV were tested, the LSV detection limit of the ICS test was 6.0×10−8mg/mL, which was the same as the quadruplex RT-PCR assay. Relative to quadruplex RT-PCR, the specificity and sensitivity of the ICS were 98.6% and 100%, respectively for field leaf samples. There was significant agreement between the results of the ICS and quadruplex RT-PCR tests (κ=0.983). Compared with conventional lily virus detection methods, our ICS test has many advantages: simple, fast, low cost, high sensitivity and specificity, and has applications in the laboratory and in the field to detect and control LSV.