The need to feed the worlds growing population puts pressure on agricultural activities to increase productivity while maintaining food safety. In this regard, invasive plant pathogens such as viruses, fungi, nematodes, mycoplasma, bacteria, etc., are typically unwelcome agents that can cause many different plant diseases and reduce crop productivity. According to a recent FAO report, plant diseases cost the global economy approximately $220 billion. Many plant diseases are traditionally identified without microscopic investigation, based on leaf symptoms and the visual condition of a plant. This occurs only when the plant disease has reached an advanced stage, making it difficult to remit and cure. Pathogens can be found in a crop as a single or mixed infection. At present, the most effective way to manage plant diseases is to plant healthy, disease-free planting material. As a result, real-time monitoring and pathogen identification efforts must be undertaken before crop planting in the field. Therefore, plant-pathogen identification and quantification in the early stages of infection are critical for ensuring food security and reducing crop loss.

Recently, advances in real-time diagnostic research have enabled disease monitoring in the field with high sensitivity and specificity. Although several biological instrumentation techniques such as enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), polymerase chain reaction (PCR), real-time PCR, multiplex PCR, fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH), and flow cytometric detection (FCM) immunology-based methods are available to detect plant pathogens, they can be very specific, time-consuming, and expensive, and they cannot be performed on dormant plant material. As a result, rapid, accurate, and low-cost diagnostics have become the new motto in plant pathology, particularly for emerging diseases or difficult pathogens that spread through asymptomatic individuals with subtle initial symptoms but are difficult to encounter.

Furthermore, in an international environment susceptible to epidemics, innovative field-use diagnostic tools represent the new horizon in diagnostic laboratories, ensuring that the instruments and techniques used are appropriate for the operational contexts. Portable systems interconnected with the Internet of Things (IoT), nanotechnology and biosensor-based diagnostics, isothermal-based nucleic acid visual detection system like loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP), rolling circle amplification (RCA), and recombinase polymerase assay (RPA) coupled with Lateral flow devices, and CRISPR/Cas technologies, etc. that can be used to detect pathogens all play important roles in this framework.

In this context, we propose a special issue consisting of research articles, reviews, and methods that will provide a comprehensive understanding of recent field-level diagnostics for real-time identification and timely management of plant diseases in crops. This issue will compile the most recent research on the diagnosis and management of important bacterial, fungal, viral, viroid, phytoplasma, and nonparasitic diseases in various crops. The articles will be contributed by eminent plant pathologists/biologists with extensive experience teaching and researching various crops with various types of diseases that cause significant economic losses. The collection would be extremely beneficial to students, teachers, researchers, and, most importantly, crop stakeholders and growers. This will make it easier to perform the most recent and advanced highly sensitive and accurate diagnostics at the point of plant disease clinic.

The following (but not limited to) topics will be covered:

• Current trends in plant disease diagnosis and management.

• Recent advancements in plant pathogen detection enabled by biosensors.

• Recent advances in nucleic acid-based assays

• Current knowledge of bio and magnetic assays in plants

• Recent advances in plant field diagnostics

• Recent advancements in plant field diagnostics

• Insights into isothermal amplification methods for real-time plant diagnosis

• Application of recombinase polymerase amplification techniques in plant disease diagnosis and management

• Role of DNA and RNA-based probes and next-generation sequencing in molecular diagnostics of pathogen detection and differentiation in fields

• Novel tools in molecular diagnostics in plant pathogen detection.

• Future of CRISPR/Cas technologies in plant pathogen detection.

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Frontiers in Plant Science

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