Roses are one of the most economically important horticultural crops, used for cut flowers, landscape plants, culinary products, essential oils, and religious rituals. Roses are susceptible to about 20 viruses of which at least half affect their economic and/or aesthetic values. With the advancement of virus diagnostic technologies more plant viruses are being routinely characterized including rose viruses. Detection and control of viruses is very important to both rose research and industry programs necessitating proper diagnostic controls. With funding from the National Clean Plant Network (NCPN) the USDA National Germplasm Resources Laboratory partners with the Texas Plant Disease Diagnostic Laboratory, Texas A&M and Foundation Plant Services, University of California, Davis to screen rose varieties for viruses, and establish a curated rose virus collection. These infections will be verified by rigorous testing using transmission electron microscopy, conventional molecular methods and high throughput sequencing. Samples from the collection will be freely available to NCPN Centers, National Plant Diagnostic Network and commercial diagnostic laboratories as well as industry representatives. The outcome will be an established virus collection used as standardized positive controls in rose virus testing and indexing. This will reduce the spread of deleterious rose viruses and increase reliability in virus testing among stakeholders and partners of the rose industry.