The USDA, in cooperation with three major universities, recently launched a web site to disseminate information related to Potato Virus Y. This information will prove useful to all groups of people who need information about PVY, from potato growers, to scientists, to people working within the potato industry, to consumers of potatoes and potato products.
The contributors say that in the past decade, Potato Virus Y (PVY) has re-emerged as a serious disease where seed potatoes are grown in the United States.
The two major contributing factors are widespread acceptance of potato varieties that express mild or no leaf mosaic symptoms of PVY infection, making detection of infected seed potatoes very difficult, and displacement of the ordinary PVY strain by necrotic strains and recombinant strains (genes from both strains), once thought to be excluded from the USA.