Hallson Gardens

I received the following message from Dr. Lockhart last week in reply to an email asking about HVX testing of hostas.

"This is in reply to your inquiry about virus testing of hostas. In the past I have offered this service free of charge to hosta growers because a few regional hosta societies had provided some financial support for my work on hosta viruses. This activity is both costly and time-consuming, and the University of Minnesota does not provide any funding for it since hostas are not considered to be of major economic importance. Because I have not recently received any contributions from hosta growers to support the work on hosta virus identification and testing it is no longer feasible for me to provide this service. Samples can be sent to Agdia or to various state university plant disease clinics for testing for specific viruses."

Sorry for the bad news.

I did send a reply mentioning that it may be possible to find some funding through our local societies or the AHS...but I have not heard back from him yet.

It appears that the current minimum charge for virus testing at the Plant Disease Clinic at the U of MN is $25. Agdia has a sliding scale, with lower costs per sample, for more samples.

Anyone know of other labs currently testing for HVX?

Gary

Thanks for the info Gary. I had a feeling this was coming, and with the flood of hobbiests wanting testing I knew it would become too much.

I'll ask around. Currently we don't have any funds to donate to testing (grocery shopping is stressful enough these days) but I'll see what we can come up with.

Thanks again for passing this along.

Chris

Chris,

If Dr. Lockhart could continue HVX testing at some level with a little financial support, I'll bet we could come up with something from our local clubs/societies.

If not, we could probably do our own little forum plant auction fund raiser and come up with a nice sum to support his work!

I sure don't think that you should have to even THINK about donating $$ from Hallsons Chris...you have already done SO much to raise awareness on the HVX issue!!
PLUS...you make this great forum available...which is a huge contribution to the effort!

Gary

Yup... I would definitely help to fund something that a lot of us feel is very important. I still don't know how Dr. Lockhart tested all the hostas over the past several years for free!

I've never sent anything in, but I have a H. 'Camelot' that is either diseased or sporting to a neat streaking, and I don't know which. I was going to send it in, but I guess I won't for now.

Andi

I have a Spritzer I wanted to have tested....

I would help out, too!