scholarly journals Comparative evaluation of lateral flow immunoassays, LAMP, and quantitative PCR for diagnosis of fire blight in apple orchards

Author(s):  
Jugpreet Singh ◽  
Della Cobb-Smith ◽  
Elizabeth Higgins ◽  
Awais Khan
Plant Disease ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Wallis ◽  
Mario R. Miranda-Sazo ◽  
Kerik Cox

The adoption of mechanical thinning and pruning in commercial apple orchards has largely been limited by the risk of development and spread of fire blight. This devastating disease, caused by the bacterial pathogen Erwinia amylovora, may be transmitted by mechanical injury such as pruning, especially under warm, moist conditions conducive to bacterial growth, infection, and disease development. However, risk may be mitigated by avoiding highest risk times and applying a bactericide, such as streptomycin, following mechanical thinning or pruning. In ‘Gala’ and ‘Idared’ orchards, we evaluated the risk of fire blight development and spread following mechanical thinning early in bloom (20% bloom), when seasonal temperatures are cooler and there are few open flowers available for infection. In both orchards, we also evaluated the spread and development of fire blight by mechanical pruning in July and in August, before and after terminal bud set when shoot growth is slowed and less susceptible to infection. We also assessed the potential efficacy of a streptomycin or Bacillus subtilis biopesticide application following mechanical thinning and pruning to mitigate the spread of fire blight. In the ‘Gala’ orchard, disease never developed beyond the inoculated tree following thinning or pruning, which was unexpected for this highly susceptible cultivar. In the ‘Idared’ orchard, incidence of blossom or shoot blight from the point source, represented as relative area under the disease progress curve (rAUDPC) was rarely different for trees that received mechanical thinning or mechanical pruning compared to untreated trees, and was frequently eliminated or reduced when the antibiotic streptomycin or the B. subtilis biopesticide was applied within 24 h of mechanical thinning or pruning. For both thinning and pruning, incidence of fire blight dropped off quickly beyond the inoculated tree in the ‘Idared’ orchard and generally was not observed in trees beyond 10-15 m from the inoculated point source or predicted beyond 10 m by exponential and power law models fit to the disease progress curves. The results of this work demonstrate the low risk for fire blight development and spread by mechanical thinning and pruning when practiced under low-risk conditions—early in bloom for mechanical thinning, and after terminal bud set (in August) for mechanical pruning—especially when paired with a subsequent bactericide application. This study demonstrates the safe use of mechanical thinning and pruning in commercial apple production, corroborated by anecdotal evidence from apple growers in Western New York State.


2011 ◽  
pp. 73-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Braun-Kiewnick ◽  
A. Lehmann ◽  
B. Duffy ◽  
T. Dreo ◽  
M. Ravnikar ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felipe Perez-Garcia ◽  
Ramon Perez-Tanoira ◽  
Maria Esther Iglesias ◽  
Juan Romanyk ◽  
Teresa Arroyo ◽  
...  

Objectives: Serologic techniques can serve as a complement to diagnose SARS-CoV-2 infection. The objective of our study was to compare the diagnostic performance of six immunoassays to detect antibodies against SARS-CoV-2: three lateral flow immunoassays (LFAs), one ELISA and two chemiluminescence assays (CLIAs). Methods: We evaluated three LFAs (Alltest, One Step and SeroFlash), one ELISA (Dia.Pro) and two CLIAs (Elecsys and COV2T). To assess the specificity, 60 pre-pandemic sera were used. To evaluate the sensitivity, we used 80 serum samples from patients with positive PCR for SARS-CoV-2. Agreement between techniques was evaluated using the kappa score (k). Results: All immunoassays showed a specificity of 100% except for SeroFlash (96.7%). Overall sensitivity was 61.3%, 73.8%, 67.5%, 85.9%, 88.0% and 92.0% for Alltest, One Step, SeroFlash, Dia.Pro, Elecsys and COV2T, respectively. Sensitivity increased throughout the first two weeks from the onset of symptoms, reaching sensitivities over 85% from 14 days for all LFAs, being One Step the most sensitive (97.6%), followed by SeroFlash (95.1%). Dia.Pro, Elecsys and COV2T showed sensitivities over 97% from 14 days, being 100% for COV2T. One Step showed the best agreement results among LFAs, showing excellent agreement with Dia.Pro (agreement=94.2%, k=0.884), COV2T (99.1%, k=0.981) and Elecsys (97.3%, k=0.943). Dia.Pro, COV2T and Elecsys also showed excellent agreement between them. Conclusions: One Step, Dia.Pro, Elecsys and COV2T obtained the best diagnostic performance results. All these techniques showed a specificity of 100% and sensitivities over 97% from 14 days after the onset of symptoms, as well as excellent levels of agreement.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (50) ◽  
Author(s):  
A. M. Jimenez Madrid ◽  
T. Klass ◽  
V. Roman-Reyna ◽  
J. Jacobs ◽  
M. L. Lewis Ivey

Erwinia amylovora is the causative agent of fire blight, a devastating disease of apples and pears worldwide. Here, we report draft genome sequences of four streptomycin-sensitive strains of E. amylovora that were isolated from diseased apple trees in Ohio.


Plant Disease ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 100 (4) ◽  
pp. 802-809 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. A. Tancos ◽  
S. Villani ◽  
S. Kuehne ◽  
E. Borejsza-Wysocka ◽  
D. Breth ◽  
...  

Resistance to streptomycin in Erwinia amylovora was first observed in the United States in the 1970s but was not found in New York until 2002, when streptomycin-resistant (SmR) E. amylovora was isolated from orchards in Wayne County. From 2011 to 2014, in total, 591 fire blight samples representing shoot blight, blossom blight, and rootstock blight were collected from 80 apple orchards in New York. From these samples, 1,280 isolates of E. amylovora were obtained and assessed for streptomycin resistance. In all, 34 SmR E. amylovora isolates were obtained from 19 individual commercial orchards. The majority of the resistant isolates were collected from orchards in Wayne County, and the remaining were from other counties in western New York. Of the 34 resistant isolates, 32 contained the streptomycin resistance gene pair strA/strB in the transposon Tn5393 on the nonconjugative plasmid pEA29. This determinant of streptomycin resistance has only been found in SmR E. amylovora isolates from Michigan and the SmR E. amylovora isolates discovered in Wayne County, NY in 2002. Currently, our data indicate that SmR E. amylovora is restricted to counties in western New York and is concentrated in the county with the original outbreak. Because the resistance is primarily present on the nonconjugative plasmid, it is possible that SmR has been present in Wayne County since the introduction in 2002, and has spread within and out of Wayne County to additional commercial growers over the past decade. However, research is still needed to provide in-depth understanding of the origin and spread of the newly discovered SmR E. amylovora to reduce the spread of streptomycin resistance into other apple-growing regions, and address the sustainability of streptomycin use for fire blight management in New York.


HortScience ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 862-865 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry K. Ngugi ◽  
James R. Schupp

The risk of spreading fire blight in apples after mechanical thinning with a rotating string blossom thinner was evaluated in field and potted-tree experiments. In the field experiment, using the mechanical thinner on noninoculated trees immediately after operating the equipment on inoculated trees significantly (P < 0.01) increased fire blight incidence resulting in 90 ± 20.01 (mean ± SE) infected shoots compared with 23.5 ± 8.97 diseased shoots in similar trees that were not thinned mechanically. A similar result was obtained in greenhouse experiments whereby healthy apple plants positioned adjacent to diseased plants before the group was subjected to the mechanical thinner developed more than twice the number of infected shoots as that on similar plants that were not thinned. These results indicate that under conditions conducive to infection, the mechanical blossom thinner significantly increases the risk of spreading Erwinia amylovora. The use of the thinner should therefore be limited to orchards with no history of disease in the last 3 years and on days when predicted weather is not suitable for tree infection by E. amylovora; otherwise, a severe fire blight epidemic could develop in the orchard.


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