Applicability of Smart Tools in Vegetable Disease Diagnostics

Abstract

Various diseases and pests cause serious damage to vegetable crops during the growing season and after harvesting. Growers attempt to minimize losses by protecting their crops, starting with seed and seedling treatments and followed by monitoring their stands. In many cases, synthetic pesticide treatments are applied. Integrated pest management is currently being employed to minimize the impact of pesticides upon human health and the environment. Over the last few years, “smart” approaches have been developed and adopted in practice to predict, detect, and quantify phytopathogen occurrence and contamination. Our review assesses the currently available ready-to-use tools and methodologies that operate via visual estimation, the detection of proteins and DNA/RNA sequences, and the utilization of brand-new innovative approaches, highlighting the availability of solutions that can be used by growers during the process of diagnosing pathogens.

Recombinase Polymerase Amplification Assay for Rapid Field Diagnosis of Stewart’s Wilt of Corn Pathogen Pantoea stewartii subsp. stewartii

“…RPA-based diagnostic tools for several economically important phytopathogens have been developed in recent years [26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40]. However, production and mass availability of affordably priced RPA assays that carry the possibility of multiple detections through the analysis of a single sample remains the single most formidable challenge for phytopathogen diagnostics at the consumer level [43]. A 'sample-in-answer-out' device purifies and digitalizes SARS-CoV-2 RNA for reverse-transcriptase (RT) RPA-based pathogen detection in a fully automated manner [44].…”

Vegetable disease detection using an improved YOLOv8 algorithm in the greenhouse plant environment

“…In greenhouse planting environments, various types of diseases affect different vegetables, and the occurrence time, types, and symptoms of the diseases can vary even within a specific type of vegetable 31 . Although several intelligent methods and tools have been developed for the detection of vegetable diseases 32 , achieving accurate detection results in greenhouse environments remains a formidable task due to the intricate nature of the diseases.…”