Rapid detection of Potato leafroll virus and Potato virus Y by reverse transcription loop-mediated isothermal amplification method in north-east India

•Potato leafroll virus(PLRV) and Potato virus Y (PVY) are among the factors responsible for significant potato crop losses in India.•The use of RT-LAMP assay facilitated quick and easy identification of PLRV and PVY isolates.•Study primers detected PLRV and PVY isolates in infected plants with high specificity.•The results showed higher sensitivity and specificity of the RT-LAMP technique over RT-PCR. Potato leafroll virus (PLRV) and Potato virus Y (PVY) are two important viruses causing serious potato yield losses in the North-east region and other planting areas in India. As a consequence, it is urgent to develop an efficient and quick method for the identification and diagnosis in the field. The results presented here showed that the reverse transcription loop-mediated isothermal amplification (RT-LAMP) method was efficient and sensitive than reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) for the detection of PLRV and PVY. The RT-LAMP primers specifically targeted PLRV and PVY (including PVYO, PVYN, and PVYNTN strains) and resulted in typical sigmoidal amplification curves. Ten-fold serial dilutions of PLRV and PVY total RNA indicated that RT-LAMP is faster and at least a hundred times more sensitive than RT-PCR in detecting both the viruses. Additionally, samples that RT-PCR could not detect at a diluted concentration of 10−3 and 10-4 ng/μl were identified by RT-LAMP. Thus, RT-LAMP offers many advantages over RT-PCR such as low cost and high accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity for the rapid diagnosis of plant virus diseases. In conclusion, the results highlighted the efficacy of the RT-LAMP method in quickly detecting PLRV and PVY in infected plants.