Electronic identification systems for reducing diagnostic workloads after disease outbreak

Abstract

Diagnostic tests for grapevine viruses subjected to phytosanitary rules involve a heavy workload for plant protection services and laboratories. Propagation schemes enable nurseries, where mother plants (MPs) are cultivated, to be linked to batches of certified plants (CPs). This approach entails post-production checks of MPs once infection occurs in CPs. However, this traceability system is not tight and follow ups are demanding. This study assessed radio frequency identification (RFID) tagging of plants in terms of its ability to reduce laboratory workloads for nursery health checks. RFID-tagged plants (RFID-CPs) were produced from individually tagged MPs (RFID-MPs) or row-tagged MPs (RFID-ROW, a less expensive approach). In a 10-year case study, the health status of CPs and RFID-CPs were assessed and the occurrence of infections then led to health checks in MPs, RFID-MPs or RFID-ROWs. Laboratory workloads were evaluated by considering two sampling methods (single or pool sampling). Using single sampling, the workload was reduced by 93-98% in RFID-ROW or RFID-MP checks compared to the conventional approach. Considerable reductions in workload due to the tagging system (93-96%) were also observed using pool sampling. Traceability of CPs and MPs using RFID reduces laboratory workloads, and supports emergency measures that can be taken to stop any unsafe sales of plants after a virus outbreak.

Device-supported spread of experimental results in a rose trial garden

“…The use of RFID to support agriculture sustainability and plant and food traceability is starting now and is less widespread and established than in industrial and logistics sectors (Weinstein, 2005;Luvisi, 2016) and veterinary field for animal identification (Sorenson et al, 1995). However, RFID systems were tested for monitoring fruit harvesting in orchard (Ampatzidis and Vougioukas, 2009), clonal selection in grapevine (Pagano et al, 2010), protection of wild flora (The Associated Press, 2008) and the health of certified plants at nursery level for grapevine (Panattoni et al, 2018) and Actinidia (Luvisi et al, 2012a).…”