Biosensor Technologies for Early Detection and Quantification of Plant Pathogens

Abstract

Plant pathogens are a major reason of reduced crop productivity and may lead to a shortage of food for both human and animal consumption. Although chemical control remains the main method to reduce foliar fungal disease incidence, frequent use can lead to loss of susceptibility in the fungal population. Furthermore, over-spraying can cause environmental contamination and poses a heavy financial burden on growers. To prevent or control disease epidemics, it is important for growers to be able to detect causal pathogen accurately, sensitively, and rapidly, so that the best practice disease management strategies can be chosen and enacted. To reach this goal, many culture-dependent, biochemical, and molecular methods have been developed for plant pathogen detection. However, these methods lack accuracy, specificity, reliability, and rapidity, and they are generally not suitable for in-situ analysis. Accordingly, there is strong interest in developing biosensing systems for early and accurate pathogen detection. There is also great scope to translate innovative nanoparticle-based biosensor approaches developed initially for human disease diagnostics for early detection of plant disease-causing pathogens. In this review, we compare conventional methods used in plant disease diagnostics with new sensing technologies in particular with deeper focus on electrochemical and optical biosensors that may be applied for plant pathogen detection and management. In addition, we discuss challenges facing biosensors and new capability the technology provides to informing disease management strategies.

Electrochemical Biosensors for Pathogen Detection: An Updated Review

“…In such assays, both the biorecognition element and the target are antibodies. Electrochemical biosensors combine an analyte-receiving mechanism and an electrochemical transducer, where the interaction between the targeted analyte and the transducer generates an electrochemical signal in current, potential, resistance, or impedance format [ 85 , 86 ]. There is a wide range of electrochemical biosensor schemes with different signal mechanisms, e.g., differential pulse voltammetry (DPV), voltammetric cyclic voltammetry (CV), polarography, square wave voltammetry (SWV), stripping voltammetry, alternating current voltammetry (ACV), and linear sweep voltammetry (LSV).…”

Ascochyta rabiei: A threat to global chickpea production

“…rabiei as well (Hariharan & Prasannath, 2021 ; Mancini et al, 2016 ). Two recent reviews have also highlighted the utility of the latest technologies—molecular capture probes targeting specific DNA sequences of the pathogen, and advanced biosensors—for the diagnosis of Botrytis species and other plant pathogens (Bilkiss et al, 2019 ; Dyussembayev et al, 2021 ). The handheld MinION sequencing system (Oxford Nanopore Technologies) can rapidly detect multiple pathogens simultaneously and sequencing data can reveal the pathogen's taxonomic status, but its analysis requires trained experts.…”

“…Some other technologies like the Luminex PCR system and the Luminex xMAP system as an alternative to ELISA, the multispectral vision system to differentiate healthy from infected seeds, magnetic-capture hybridization PCR, and BIO-PCR also hold great promise in detecting fungal pathogens and possibly can be used for A. rabiei as well (Hariharan & Prasannath, 2021;Mancini et al, 2016). Two recent reviews have also highlighted the utility of the latest technologies-molecular capture probes targeting specific DNA sequences of the pathogen, and advanced biosensors-for the diagnosis of Botrytis species and other plant pathogens (Bilkiss et al, 2019;Dyussembayev et al, 2021). The handheld MinION sequencing system (Oxford Nanopore Technologies) can rapidly detect multiple pathogens simultaneously and sequencing data can reveal the pathogen's taxonomic status, but its analysis requires trained experts.…”

Potential of nanobiosensor in sustainable agriculture: the state-of-art

“…Phytophthora infestans are the causal agent of late blight disease. Along with this, some other plant pathogens are also present such as Acidovorax avenae , Pseudomonas syringe , Ralstonia solanacearum , Pantoea stewartii , Botrytis cinerea , Pseudocercospora fijiensis , Leptosphaeria maculans , etc ( Dyussembayev et al., 2021 ). Most of the studies on plant pathology aim to reduce catastrophic crop loss directly or indirectly ( Li et al., 2020 ).…”