Citrus tristeza virus (CTV) is one of the most important citrus viruses in the world. In this study, we established a reverse-transcription droplet digital polymerase chain reaction (RT-ddPCR) method for the sensitive and accurate quantification of CTV. Quantitative linearity, sensitivity and accuracy of RT-ddPCR were compared to those of reverse-transcription real time PCR (RT-qPCR) by using 10-fold serial dilutions of the CTV RNA transcripts. Both methods showed a high degree of linearity (R² = 0.991) and quantitative correlation, although RT-ddPCR revealed 100-fold higher sensitivity than RT-qPCR. The detection results for heat-treatment citrus samples also showed that the positive detection rate of RT-ddPCR (73.2%) was higher than that of RT-qPCR (53.6%). In summary, the results indicated that RT-ddPCR may contribute to improved analytical sensitivity and accuracy for CTV detection.

特里斯柑橘病毒（CTV）是世界上最重要的柑橘病毒之一。在这项研究中，我们建立了逆转录液滴数字聚合酶链反应（RT-ddPCR）方法，用于对CTV进行灵敏而准确的定量。通过使用CTV RNA转录本的10倍系列稀释液，将RT-ddPCR的定量线性，灵敏度和准确性与逆转录实时PCR（RT-qPCR）进行了比较。两种方法均显示出高度的线性度（R ² = 0.991）和定量相关性，尽管RT-ddPCR的灵敏度比RT-qPCR高100倍。热处理柑橘样品的检测结果还表明，RT-ddPCR的阳性检出率为73.2％，高于RT-qPCR的检出率为53.6％。总之，结果表明RT-ddPCR可能有助于提高CTV检测的分析灵敏度和准确性。