Abstract
Bovine viral diarrhea (BVD), caused by bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV), has a significant economic impact on affected farms worldwide. For effective disease control, it is crucial to select appropriate vaccinations based on the specific genotype of BVDV. Therefore, developing a rapid and reliable assay to detect and genotype BVDV is imperative to control the spread of disease. In this study, we developed a direct TaqMan assay to detect and genotype BVDV type 1 and 2 from bovine serum. The direct BVDV TaqMan assay effectively detected both BVDV1 and BVDV2 with confirmed specificity and showed no cross-reactivity with other viruses (BRSV, BCoV, AKAV, BoHV-1, BPIV-3, BIV, or BLV). Limit of detection (LOD) determination from serum revealed that the assay could detect serum samples with a viral titer of 102 TCID50/mL in two out of three trials for BVDV1 and 102 TCID50/mL across all trials for BVDV2, which was equivalent to the sensitivity of virus isolation. Our findings represent a significant advancement in BVDV detection and typing directly from bovine serum.