What to Do If Your Chinese Orchid Gets a Virus? A Practical Guide to Solutions

1. When buying Chinese orchid plants, growers should first confirm the plants are virus-free before introducing them. 2. Chinese orchid virus symptoms can only be observed with the naked eye on newly grown tissue. When purchasing, growers should preferably choose healthy, vigorous Chinese orchids that have sprouted new shoots, in order to avoid buying virus-carrying plants. 3. Pay constant attention to the growth condition of Chinese orchid plants. Any plant found to be infected with a virus should be promptly isolated or destroyed to avoid contact with other healthy orchids and prevent infection. 4.CultivationTools used during the process, such as scissors, blades, clamps and other division and pruning tools, should after each use be soaked in 5% NaOH (sodium hydroxide) for 1 minute for disinfection, then rinsed with clean water after soaking in NaOH before being used again. This prevents virus-laden sap remaining on the tools from spreading to healthy plants. 5. Old orchid pots and potting media that have been used must not be reused and should be discarded immediately. 6. When planting Chinese orchids, an appropriate spacing between plants should be maintained as much as possible to avoid overly dense planting, which causes leaf-to-leaf friction between orchid plants and creates opportunities for mechanical injury. 7. After division, use chemical agents forPests and Diseasesdisinfection. Avoid soaking multiple plants at the same time or using the same bucket of chemical agent multiple times. Instead, after dividing, pruning and planting into orchid pots and placing them on the orchid bench, carry out chemical disinfection by watering the pots. On one hand this can kill pathogenic bacteria remaining in the medium, and on the other hand it can block the spread of viruses. 8.CultivationFacilities should have orchid pots placed on a flat surface, and Chinese orchids should as far as possible not be placed under orchid benches where Chinese orchids are already growing. 9. Refuse to let visitors touch Chinese orchids freely by hand during visits, in order to reduce the chance of virus infection. 1O. When removing or cutting off diseased leaves, roots or flowers, try to pick or cut by hand only once, and take preventive measures each time, to avoid virus-laden sap remaining on hands or tools from spreading to healthy Chinese orchid plants. 11. When repotting, orchid pots should be raised up during the operation to avoid the pots coming into contact with old medium that may carry residual virus. 12. When watering or spraying chemicals, avoid overly forceful spraying, which only increases the chance of leaf friction and injury between orchid plants. The various control measures above are based on a lecture the author attended in 1995, organized by the Taiwan Provincial Department of Agriculture and given by Dr. Zhang Qing'an at the Wufeng Agricultural Experiment Station, titled <OrchidViral Diseases>, as well as on the currentcultivationsituation of domestic orchid growers, and are offered for reference to domestic orchid growers, with requests for correction from senior members of the orchid community. If orchid growers have symptoms suspected of viral infection that they cannot confirm on their own, or wish to understand further, they can go to a nearby or directly visit the orchid virus testing centers at local agricultural improvement stations or agricultural experiment stations, where testing for your beloved orchids is provided free of charge, along with consultation on related information.