Canine Olfactory Detection of a Non-Systemic Phytobacterial Citrus Pathogen of International Quarantine Significance.

摘要: For millennia humans have benefitted from application of the acute canine sense smell to hunt, track and find targets importance. In this report, canines were evaluated for their ability detect severe exotic phytobacterial arboreal pathogen Xanthomonas citri pv. (Xcc), which is causal agent Asiatic citrus canker (Acc). Since Xcc causes only local lesions, infections are non-systemic, limiting use serological molecular diagnostic tools field-level detection. This necessitates reliance on human visual surveys Acc symptoms, highly inefficient at low disease incidence, thus early simulated orchards overall combined performance metrics a pair 0.9856, 0.9974, 0.9257 0.9970, sensitivity, specificity, precision, accuracy, respectively, with 1–2 s/tree detection time. Detection trace commercial packinghouse fruit resulted in 0.7313, 0.9947, 0.8750, 0.9821 same across range cartons 0–10% Xcc-infected despite noisy, hot potentially distracting environment. orchards, sensitivity increased lesion whereas specificity accuracy was >0.99 all incidence levels; i.e., false positive rates uniformly low. Canines also alerted 1–12-week-old equal accuracy. When trained either trees or axenic cultures, inherently detected homologous heterologous targets, suggesting they can directly rather than volatiles produced by host following infection. able scent signature very concentrations (10,000× less 1 bacterial cell per sample), implies that composed volatile organic compound constituents exudates occur many fold cells. The results imply be as viable detectors deployed packinghouses, nurseries.