Teddahlia I always have a problem with advice that is not backed up by actual research. In this case, they should use some contaminated tools and see if they can spread the virus that way.
I agree completely on the need to do actual research. The team asked Dr Pappu about doing some experiments like this on virus transfer. His response was that transfer via contaminated cutting tools was so well known that it was not worth while (for the WSU staff, anyway) to do another. Ron Miner (head of the ADS virus research team) did an experiment on his own. He had grown plants of an (unpromising) seedling in the middle of a patch of plants with virus, for four years, and none of those seedling plants ever tested positive for virus. Then he made multiple cuts on a plant which had tested positive for TSV earlier in the season, and then on one branch of one of the seedling plants. He cleaned his clippers, and then made a single cut on the infected plant, followed by two cuts, one on each side of a second seedling plant. A month later, both seedling plants tested positive for TSV. A small sample, but worth noting.
