I agree Elaine... All of my plants that have tested positive.. Are ROBUST.. Growing new growth.. But once they flower.. And the color breaks appear.. I can't bring them to our monthly orchid club meeting.. Or any show... And they are out there , cheek by jowl on my bench..its worrisome.

It sure is, and I'm with you because I have a few nice specimen size plants I'd hate to lose. But I just refuse to worry about something I can't (won't) do anything about. Unless you're going to test every plant, and every new plant you buy . . . forever . . . then you can't even segregate them effectively.

Have you talked to Jim and others at your Orchid Society about maybe getting together and making a group buy on the tests? At $12 each, it's just out of the question but if Agdia will make you a better price on a large order it might make it do-able.

On the bright side (my favorite in case you hadn't noticed) a lot of your plants may not show symptoms ever, or for years. I'm sure you'll have lots of nice bloomers to take to meetings going forward.

Personally, I'd rather spend all that money on buying new interesting plants, and just live with the higher attrition rate we'll be seeing as the viruses progress. Plus as I said before, we WILL see plants that will show resistance and that is the ultimate goal here.

Won't do me much good, or any of the dozens/hundreds of others that follow this forum and live across the nation. I have 400 orchids. What should I do or really, any other hobbyist that grows lots of plants? I doubt viruses are any thing new. A kit costs more than my profit from selling a plant. I think its time to be practical.

I'm sure the commercial grower feel the same way.

Exactly. So unless everybody in the world who has an orchid tests every plant, and destroys any that test positive we really will just have to live with it.

Demanding that the growers "guarantee" they are selling virus-free plants will destroy the whole booming industry, and make orchids prohibitively expensive for hobbyists. It still would do no good because as soon as someone like me brings a clean plant into my collection, it will eventually get infected anyway. Thrips being thrips . . you know. Viruses cross from one type of plant to another as well. So even if (in a perfect world) we eliminated viruses from orchids, new ones would show up and infect from . . tomatoes or impatiens or something else.

It's purely a case of "letting Nature take its course" and waiting for the plants to develop immunity .. or die off. In 10 years, there may be no Cattleyas at all for sale because they didn't get immune fast enough or not enough crosses are at sale-able size yet from the resistant varieties. Then they'll cost an outrageous amount for a while until a sufficient number are grown to supply the demand and drive the price down again. A very sad thought.

There was a time when the orchid industry was limited to a very few specialized growers who propagated by divisions and. probably less often, by seeds. It seems once tissue culture became the norm plants and the accompanying problems like these invisible diseases increased.

No doubt about it.

I like your thought process Elaine and I bet you are right, Alice. I have more important things to worry about, things that I actually have at least some control over. I try never to worry about things that I have no control over.

I'm with you Ken on only worrying about things I can control , or even influence.. Learned that lesson early on in my flying career!
Elaine, agdia does sell in larger quantities at a more reasonable price, but it's still not cost effective for regular folks.

Agdia certainly does a lot of great research on plant diseases. I guess we can't blame them for sending their lady around to orchid clubs to talk about viruses, and sell those expensive test kits.

I call it 'fear mongering' when companies sell their products like that, though. They make people afraid that their plants have viruses, sell them the tests, then in this case, they find out that they really DO have the viruses but if they'd thought it through in the first place, it really doesn't help you much to know.

A lot of stuff here in FL is marketed this way - specifically air conditioner "tune ups" where the person really isn't there to tune up your a/c, (they convince you that you need a new one because the old one is about to fail) and water purification systems where they make people believe that the water coming out of their tap is bad for them.

Our orchid society invested in a large quantity of test kits and resold them in small quantities to members, passing along the discounted price. Maybe your orchid society would do the same thing?

Lindsey, It sounds like the grower you purchased your orchids from knew he had a problem (or discovered he had a problem after a visit from your speaker). Not knowing you have a virus is one thing but selling orchids you know are infected is just wrong. I remember now that you mentioned this way back in the beginning of this thread. Did you add him to the 'No Fly' list?

I think I mentioned that listening to Janet Lamborn was like listening to an infomercial. The information was great but I can't worry about everything (so the blatant 'must buy, must test' message was WAY annoying). I don't see any clear indications I have a virus. I look. But I also look for bugs and plants that for some reason are no longer being hit by the sprinklers. I usually see those things (insects and dry plants) about 30 seconds before full blown disaster.