Assessment of Instrument Efficiency in Detecting Airborne Virus

In livestock industry, damage caused by the epidemic diseases such as Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD), Highly-Pathogenic-Avian-Influenza (HPAI) and Porcine-Reproductive-and-Respiratory-Syndrome (PRRS) was very serious. The financial loss incurred from FMD alone which occurred on Nov. 2011 in Korea was estimated at 3 billion won, 23 % of annual livestock industry production. The livestock industry in Korea has greater risk of disease infection because of high density production, etc. Investigating the spread of livestock diseases should consider both direct and indirect contact as well as other various factors including airborne. Airborne infection of livestock disease was first hypothesised in the early 1900s, however, field experimental studies are still limited. Furthermore, no protocol is available in detecting airborne viruses in the field. In this study, effective virus samplers were investigated by comparative analysis of the type of samplers used detect to airborne virus. Laboratory experiments were conducted to compare virus samplers such as Bio-sampler, Dust-sampler, Compact-Cascade-Impactor (CCI) and Microflow in detecting PRRSV. Samples were analyzed by Reverse-Transcription PCR to assess the efficiency of the instrument in detecting the airborne virus. First, samples were classified into five levels according to light intensity of gel images and then the classified results were normalized. In every case, Bio-sampler and Dust-sampler were comparable with each other and have shown to be more effective than CCI and Microflow samplers.