Location: Horticultural Crops Disease and Pest Management Research Unit
Project Number: 2072-22000-045-064-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Sep 1, 2025
End Date: Aug 31, 2027
Objective:
Development of novel crop bio-security capability using air sampling, metagenomic and computational approaches.
Approach:
This project will identify develop an integrated workflow for sampling of airborne microbes, followed by metagenomc sequencing, and analysis of the data in a computational pipeline to determine presence of known plant pathogens. Various custom made sampling devices will be deployed in agronomic, urban, or forest environments. Collected samples will them be processed for extraction of nucleic acids and sequenced. Sequence will then be analyzed using novel bioinformatic approaches to identify pathogens present. In addition, we will examine the utility of the approach to detect presence of other genetic markers of interest (e.g. mutations associated with fungicide resistance).