Emerging extraction and diagnostic tools for detection of plant pathogens: Recent trends, challenges, and future scope

Abstract

Plant pathogens are a serious threat to agriculture for long-term viability and cost loss of billions of dollars yearly. Many pathogens have been documented in the literature that infect a variety of crops. Nevertheless, new pathogens emerge and often result in disease outbreaks, leading to million-dollar losses. Currently, several diagnostic approaches with enhanced sensitivity and specificity for the identification of widespread and/or unknown plant pathogens are constantly being developed. Whereas the extensively used approaches for plant pathogen diagnostics are mostly serological and nucleic acid-based assays, many different nucleic acid-based approaches for amplifying target DNA/RNA have also emerged over time. However, these approaches lack precision, specificity, and rapidity, making them unsuitable for on-field analysis. As a result, there is a lot of interest arising in field-deployable point of care (POC) devices and artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted pathogens' detection accurately at an early stage within a minute. Similarly, development of a cell-lysis and purification-free DNA/RNA extraction process is also crucial for quick sample preparation for molecular diagnosis of plant pathogens at field level. In this review, we have discussed advanced tools that are trending not only to extract nucleic acids but also detect plant pathogens. We have also discussed critical challenges and future perspectives of disease diagnostic tools for plant pathogens' detection. In summary, advanced plant disease diagnostic tools can be helpful for routine monitoring of plant pathogens toward improving crop productivity and yield that can be used for improving the financial status of farmers.