Rapid correlation between field isolates and vaccine strains of foot-and-mouth disease virus.

Antigenic relationships between field isolates of foot-and-mouth disease virus and available vaccine strains can be rapidly determined by ELISA. The most suitable vaccine strain to control an outbreak caused by the field isolate can then be quickly identified. The classical method of subtyping strains of foot-and-mouth disease virus should be replaced with a nomenclature which describes the relationship between a strain and the most antigenically closely related vaccine strain.