Accurate management practices in crop health and food safety are critical, especially regarding the detection of plant pathogens in the early stages of a disease. To date, specific, fast and sensitive technologies for point‐of‐care diagnosis and simple or grower‐friendly devices are very valuable, as no specialized staff are required for diagnosing a disease in the field. This is especially the case today, when factors such as climate change may cause the appearance of pathogens in areas where years ago they were unexpected. The aim of this research is to review some of the promising techniques that can be applied to in‐field molecular detection of plant pathogens and how these techniques can change the way farmers and pathologists are diagnosing plant diseases. Some of them, like loop‐mediated isothermal amplification and recombinase polymerase amplification, are already being successfully used for routine diagnosis. However, most technologies still need validation in the plant pathology field, where they have a promising future for in‐field diagnosis when combined with simple DNA extraction methods, reagent stabilization techniques and their integration into portable devices.
The detection of viruses in sewage is a method of environmental surveillance, which allows evaluating the circulation of different viruses in a community. This study presents the first results of sewage surveillance to detect the circulation of SARS-CoV-2 virus in Santiago, Chile. Using ultracentrifugation associated with RT-qPCR, we detected SARS-CoV-2 in untreated and treated wastewater samples obtained two treatment plants, which together process around 85% of the wastewater from the city. This is the first report of detection of SARS-CoV-2 in sewage in Chile and indicates that wastewater surveillance could be a sensitive tool useful as a predictive marker of the circulation of the virus in a population and therefore, be used as an early warning tool.
Clones of Eucalyptus globulus Labill. (5- to 7-year-old), from a common geographic area, were evaluated for chemical pulping easiness. Significant variations were observed in the pulp yield and specific wood consumption to produce pulps with similar kappa numbers, as well as in the strength properties of the resulting kraft pulps. Comprehensive lignin analyses were undertaken in an attempt to rationalize the observed differences in these clones’ pulping performance. While lignin content did not correlate with pulp yield, the data reported here provides evidence of the influence of lignin features on the pulping response of different eucalyptus clones. Significant correlations were observed between pulp yield and specific wood consumption and the content of syringyl-type arylglycerol-β-aryl structures (β-O-4 linkages). Furthermore, eucalyptus woods with a greater content of uncondensed β-O-4 linkages were found to require more PFI revolutions to obtain pulps with a given drainability. In contrast, no relationship between pulping efficiency and the other lignin structural features evaluated was apparent, including syringyl/guaiacyl ratio (S/G), total aliphatic and phenolic hydroxyl groups, syringyl and guaiacyl units bearing free phenolic hydroxyls, and the erythro-to-threo ratio of β-O-4 structures. These findings support the use of the content of syringyl-type arylglycerol-β-aryl structures as a selection parameter in clonal breeding programs for pulpwood production.
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