An Insight into Current Trends of Pathogen Identification in Plants

Abstract

Worldwide, plant diseases have caused major economic losses in the agricultural industry. Food security is a major issue to the rising global population. Plant health monitoring and the early detection of pathogens are important in decreasing the propagation of diseases and providing the best strategy. To reduce the damage caused by old and new pathogens, and to speed up the management and reduction of crop loss, a fast and reliable detection method in combination with decision support systems is essential. New tools and technologies were developed for both detection and diagnosis, often substituting old methods to make them quicker, more accurate, and precise. With the rising global population, there is need to boost crop production and protect the crop from seed to market. There is also need to use the latest technology for rapid and precise diagnosis of plant diseases to minimize losses for sustainable production. In addition to the traditional visual screening for symptoms, nucleic acid and serological-based tools will provide precise and rapid detection and diagnosis. Remote sensing technology, along with spectroscopy, will help in the capture of high spatialization of results, and can be very useful to identify primary infections quickly. Handheld antibody-based immuno-biosensor also helps the rapid detection of plant diseases. This chapter enlightens on the various recent technologies in plant pathogen identification for sustainable and effective crop production, and the safeguard of the crop produce.