Plastic multiwell plates to assay avian infectious bronchitis virus in organ cultures of chicken embryo trachea.

Simple assay systems for infectivity titrations of avian infectious bronchitis virus (IBV) in chicken embryo trachea organ cultures (OC) were developed using plastic multiplate wells with one tracheal ring per well; these assays appeared to be much more satisfactory than the conventional rolled-tube method. The medium, 0.05 M HEPES (N-2-hydroxyethylpiperazine-N'-2-ethanesulfonic acid)-buffered Eagle minimal essential medium was not changed during observation. A medium containing 0.4% bovine serum albumin did not influence the virus yield, but did stabilize virus viability during storage. Reproducibility of results obtained in the OC system was confirmed by performing replicate titrations of the Beaudette strain with three different passage histories. The mean virus titers in the OC were lower than those in chicken embryos, depending on the IBV passage histories. The time required for ciliostasis was related not only to the concentration of virus, but also to the IBV passage history. Application of OC techniques for the constant serum-variable virus neutralization test gave low neutralization indexes with excellent reproducibility as compared with those obtained in the chicken embryo assay system. Also, the slopes of neutralization curves obtained by assays in OC were less steep than those seen in the chicken embryo system.