Previsual symptoms of Xylella fastidiosa infection revealed in spectral plant-trait alterations
Plant pathogens cause significant losses to agricultural yields and increasingly threaten food security 1 , ecosystem integrity and societies in general 2 – 5 . Xylella fastidiosa is one of the most dangerous plant bacteria worldwide, causing several diseases with profound impacts on agriculture and...
Saved in:
Published in | Nature plants Vol. 4; no. 7; pp. 432 - 439 |
---|---|
Main Authors | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
London
Nature Publishing Group UK
01.07.2018
Nature Publishing Group |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
Cover
Loading…
Summary: | Plant pathogens cause significant losses to agricultural yields and increasingly threaten food security
1
, ecosystem integrity and societies in general
2
–
5
.
Xylella fastidiosa
is one of the most dangerous plant bacteria worldwide, causing several diseases with profound impacts on agriculture and the environment
6
. Primarily occurring in the Americas, its recent discovery in Asia and Europe demonstrates that
X. fastidiosa
’s geographic range has broadened considerably, positioning it as a reemerging global threat that has caused socioeconomic and cultural damage
7
,
8
.
X. fastidiosa
can infect more than 350 plant species worldwide
9
, and early detection is critical for its eradication
8
. In this article, we show that changes in plant functional traits retrieved from airborne imaging spectroscopy and thermography can reveal
X. fastidiosa
infection in olive trees before symptoms are visible. We obtained accuracies of disease detection, confirmed by quantitative polymerase chain reaction, exceeding 80% when high-resolution fluorescence quantified by three-dimensional simulations and thermal stress indicators were coupled with photosynthetic traits sensitive to rapid pigment dynamics and degradation. Moreover, we found that the visually asymptomatic trees originally scored as affected by spectral plant-trait alterations, developed
X. fastidiosa
symptoms at almost double the rate of the asymptomatic trees classified as not affected by remote sensing. We demonstrate that spectral plant-trait alterations caused by
X. fastidiosa
infection are detectable previsually at the landscape scale, a critical requirement to help eradicate some of the most devastating plant diseases worldwide.
Entire landscapes are scanned by airborne hyperspectral imaging to detect early infection of individual olive trees by the pathogenic bacteria,
Xylella fastidiosa
. The disease can then be mapped before symptoms are visible from the ground. |
---|---|
Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
ISSN: | 2055-0278 2055-0278 |
DOI: | 10.1038/s41477-018-0189-7 |