Detection of Huanglongbing Disease Using Differential
Mobility Spectrometry
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Abstract
The viability of the multibillion
dollar global citrus industry
is threatened by the “green menace”, citrus greening
disease (Huanglongbing, HLB), caused by the bacterial pathogen <i>Candidatus Liberibacter</i>. The long asymptomatic stage of
HLB makes it challenging to detect emerging regional infections early
to limit disease spread. We have established a novel method of disease
detection based on chemical analysis of released volatile organic
compounds (VOCs) that emanate from infected trees. We found that the
biomarkers “fingerprint” is specific to the causal pathogen
and could be interpreted using analytical methods such as gas chromatography/mass
spectrometry (GC/MS) and gas chromatography/differential mobility
spectrometry (GC/DMS). This VOC-based disease detection method has
a high accuracy of ∼90% throughout the year, approaching 100%
under optimal testing conditions, even at very early stages of infection
where other methods are not adequate. Detecting early infection based
on VOCs precedes visual symptoms and DNA-based detection techniques
(real-time polymerase chain reaction, RT-PCR) and can be performed
at a substantially lower cost and with rapid field deployment