Plant pathogen detection: exploring modern techniques and future directions

Phytopathogens are one of the major detrimental agents which cause significant yield loss and affect crop productivity and food security. Diagnosis of phytopathogen in the initial stages of disease development is essential for accurate field-level management. The disease can be currently diagnosed early from the field more precisely because of the development of precise, quick, and sensitive technologies. This is especially true today, when variables like climate change may drive infections to arise in regions where they were unanticipated in the past. The traditional identification methods largely relied on the cultural characteristics of pathogens, the symptomatic expression of plants infected, or based on the signs present in infected plants. These methods largely involved skilled experts and it is time-consuming. On the other hand, the recent developments in DNA-based diagnosis methods have become popular in the diagnosis of phytopathogen. Advanced molecular methods such as PCR-based methods, isothermal amplification-based methods, probe-based methods, post-amplification techniques, next-generation sequencing, and approaches grounded on the analysis of volatile compounds are being used in the detection of several phytopathogen owing to their sensitivity and reliability. Further, these techniques have the advantage of their applicability to non-culturable pathogens. The current review aims to explore some of the potential methods and advances in the field of real-time detection of plant pathogens and how these methods may alter farmers and pathologists in diagnosing plant diseases.