Location: Horticultural Crops Disease and Pest Management Research Unit
Project Number: 2072-22000-046-062-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Sep 1, 2025
End Date: Oct 31, 2026
Objective:
1. Validating Microbe Finder (MiFi), a plant pathogen detection tool, for detection of plant pathogens from symptomatic and asymptomatic samples for diagnosis of pre- and post-harvest infections of Pennsylvania floricultural crops.
2. Developing e-probes for important plant pathogens of floricultural crops that have not been targeted yet, including insect-borne viruses and bacteria.
Approach:
1. Samples of symptomatic and asymptomatic plants, insect vectors will be obtained from Pennsylvania floricultural greenhouses or produced under controlled conditions.
2. Nucleic acids will be purified from the samples to include metagenomic DNA and RNA.
3. DNA and RNA samples will be sequenced using high-throughput sequencing (HTS)-based methods.
4. Raw sequencing outputs will be uploaded to MiFi for detection of plant pathogenic fungi, oomycetes, bacteria and viruses.
5. MiFi results will be compared with real-time PCR and real-time RT PCR results.