Infectious pancreatic necrosis virus (IPNY) is an economically important fish pathogen since it causes the high-mortality disease in early stage of hatchery-reared fishes. In order to develop a rapid, sensitive and highly specific detection method for IPNV, reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was carried out using the oligonucleotide primers selected from the sequence of VP2, a major capsid polypertide of IPNV. As little as 40ng of purified IPNV dsRNA was detected by RT-PCR amplification, but no amplification products were obtained when nucleic acid genomes from other fish pathogens such as IHNV were used as RT-PCR templates. in situ RT-PCR methods are useful for the rapid and sensitive identification of IPNV.