Divergent abiotic spectral pathways unravel pathogen stress signals across species

P. J. Zarco-Tejada (), T. Poblete, C. Camino, V. Gonzalez-Dugo, R. Calderon, A. Hornero, R. Hernandez-Clemente, M. Román-Écija, M. P. Velasco-Amo, B. B. Landa, P. S. A. Beck, M. Saponari, D. Boscia and J. A. Navas-Cortes
Additional contact information
P. J. Zarco-Tejada: University of Melbourne
T. Poblete: University of Melbourne
C. Camino: European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC)
V. Gonzalez-Dugo: Instituto de Agricultura Sostenible (IAS), Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
R. Calderon: School of Integrative Plant Science, Cornell AgriTech, Cornell University
A. Hornero: Instituto de Agricultura Sostenible (IAS), Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
R. Hernandez-Clemente: Swansea University
M. Román-Écija: Instituto de Agricultura Sostenible (IAS), Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
M. P. Velasco-Amo: Instituto de Agricultura Sostenible (IAS), Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
B. B. Landa: Instituto de Agricultura Sostenible (IAS), Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
P. S. A. Beck: European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC)
M. Saponari: CNR, Istituto per la Protezione Sostenibile delle Piante
D. Boscia: CNR, Istituto per la Protezione Sostenibile delle Piante
J. A. Navas-Cortes: Instituto de Agricultura Sostenible (IAS), Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)

Nature Communications, 2021, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-11

Abstract: Abstract Plant pathogens pose increasing threats to global food security, causing yield losses that exceed 30% in food-deficit regions. Xylella fastidiosa (Xf) represents the major transboundary plant pest and one of the world’s most damaging pathogens in terms of socioeconomic impact. Spectral screening methods are critical to detect non-visual symptoms of early infection and prevent spread. However, the subtle pathogen-induced physiological alterations that are spectrally detectable are entangled with the dynamics of abiotic stresses. Here, using airborne spectroscopy and thermal scanning of areas covering more than one million trees of different species, infections and water stress levels, we reveal the existence of divergent pathogen- and host-specific spectral pathways that can disentangle biotic-induced symptoms. We demonstrate that uncoupling this biotic–abiotic spectral dynamics diminishes the uncertainty in the Xf detection to below 6% across different hosts. Assessing these deviating pathways against another harmful vascular pathogen that produces analogous symptoms, Verticillium dahliae, the divergent routes remained pathogen- and host-specific, revealing detection accuracies exceeding 92% across pathosystems. These urgently needed hyperspectral methods advance early detection of devastating pathogens to reduce the billions in crop losses worldwide.

Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26335-3 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:12:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-021-26335-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-26335-3

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().