A roadmap for the detection of plant pests and diseases
Reliable diagnostics serve as the basis for the cultivation and trade of healthy crops. Healthy crops in turn are essential for safe and sustainable agriculture, contributing to wholesome nutrition and a better quality of life. In short, healthy plants feed the world.
Major crops are, however, threatened by a range of plant diseases and pests. Reliable diagnostic tests allow these pests to be detected, identified and/or monitored in a timely fashion.
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The infographic "Platforms for the detection of plant diseases and pests" can be downloaded for free and describes technologies such as Luminex, which detects multiple plant pathogens simultaneously by binding them to coloured paramagnetic beads, Next Generation Sequencing (NGS), which maps known and unknown plant diseases within 25 hours, LAMP, which conducts fast analyses in the field, and TaqMan-PCR, which is based on polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a method for which Kary Mullis received the Nobel Prize in 1993.
For each technology, the infographic shows speed, location, sensitivity, specificity, cost, number of pathogens per sample, number of samples per test, quality versus quantity, and, in summary, the added value of the platform.
Source: Wageningen University & Research