SUMMARY

Several detection methods were compared, as a guide for the development of the most efficient diagnostic tools for the broad specificity or specific identification of Grapevine leafroll-associated virus 2 (GLRaV-2) vari-ants. To this aim, comparative trials were carried out us-ing a group of distinctive GLRaV-2 variants, the GLRaV-2-RG strain and a new strain, called GLRaV-2-BD. ELISA detected all GLRaV-2 isolates when the tested samples contained a sufficiently high concentra-tion of the antigen. RT-PCR was more sensitive than ELISA, but did not recognise all the GLRaV-2 se-quence variants under investigation. New primer pairs were therefore designed, some of which allowed the si-multaneous detection of all isolates, while others were specific to each variant. The universal primer pairs for GLRaV-2, together with RFLP analysis, allowed a rapid identification and characterisation of GLRaV-2 variants with divergent sequences