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REVIEW article

Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Pathogen Interactions
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1547974
This article is part of the Research Topic Innovative Field Diagnostics for Real-Time Plant Pathogen Detection and Management View all articles

Current status and future perspectives of the diagnostic of plant bacterial pathogens

Provisionally accepted
Qinhua Gan Qinhua Gan 1*Xu Wang Xu Wang 1Shuiying Liang Shuiying Liang 1Bo Cai Bo Cai 2Caixia Liu Caixia Liu 2Yandu LU Yandu LU 1
  • 1 Hainan University, Haikou, China
  • 2 Shanghai Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau, Shanghai, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Diagnostic of plant bacterial pathogens underwent a leapfrog development from culture-based strategies to culture-free detection. Conventional diagnostics, such antibody-and PCR-based methods, are sensitive to identify pre-enriched pathogens in naturally infected crops at the late stage. However, they suffer from shortcomings relating to rapidity, signal strength, and a significant reduction in sensitivity in real plant extract. Progress has been made to address these challenges through development of labelled and non-labelled optical spectroscopy. Specifically, the micro-Raman spectroscopy enables fast, label-free, and non-invasive discrimination of viable but non-culturable pathogens at a single-cell level. A comprehensive spectroscopic database is always a prerequisite for identification, yet these spectroscopy-based methods are insufficient to detect previously unknown plant pathogens. The advance of single-cell sequencing and synthetic biology is beginning to address these crucial problems and is being used in related practical applications.Success will continue to be found at the interfaces between disciplines.

    Keywords: plant pathogens, morphology-based diagnostic, immunology-based methods, Micro-Raman spectroscopy, non-invasive discrimination, single-cell detection

    Received: 19 Dec 2024; Accepted: 03 Feb 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Gan, Wang, Liang, Cai, Liu and LU. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Qinhua Gan, Hainan University, Haikou, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.