Development of a novel quantitative real‐time PCR assay with lyophilized powder reagent to detect African swine fever virus in blood samples of domestic pigs in China

African swine fever (ASF) is a devastating disease, which is causing huge economic losses in China. Therefore, it is urgent to provide a rapid, highly specific and sensitive diagnostic method for the detection of African swine fever virus (ASFV), the ASF infectious agent. In this study, a novel quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) assay with lyophilized powder reagents (LPR), targeting the major structural protein p72 gene,...