Speedster,
Many fruits are virus infected. I don’t intentionally graft virus infected pears but many people do grow them. The virus infected wood they sent you is likely infected with a minor virus but they will tell you which one in their descriptions. Google the virus symptoms and decide if the benefit outweighs the cost. I don’t order the virus infected ones because it sometimes effects growth slightly. If you trade a lot of scions you likely have several viruses over the course of many years. The people most at risk for viruses are those that multigraft trees. Lets say you grafted 4 virus infected pieces of wood on one tree now every scion shared from that tree has 4 viruses. The people recieving those scions don’t know the wood is virus infected in most cases and it’s unlikely the person helping them out realizes either. That’s why I think it’s best if you have the room graft one variety to one tree. I don’t always have the open trees to graft to because rootstocks take at least a year to grow out here. Last year was a wet year so I got away with bench grafting trees.I would highly recommend you read this post Virus free scion wood?
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