As the global population surges, the challenge of producing enough food becomes increasingly pressing. Fortunately, researchers from the Netherlands have developed a groundbreaking new method that allows for real-time monitoring of plant diseases, without the need to destroy the plants. This innovative approach, called dynamic optical coherence tomography (dOCT), could pave the way for the cultivation of more resilient crops that require fewer pesticides and yield higher outputs, ultimately helping to feed more people worldwide.
The Battle Against New Plant Disease Threats
For plant diseases such as downy mildew, this is a major threat to the global food security because they can evolve so quickly that resistant crop varieties can easily be infected. Now scientists at Delft University of Technology and Utrecht University have found an approach that could provide a game changer for dealing with this.
Now, by employing dOCT methods, they are able to follow the progress of plant diseases in live plants over time without resorting to these destructive techniques. This breakthrough will enable scientists and breeders to gain a better insight into how diseases develop within plants, and what is behind certain crops being more robust. This information has the potential to be used in order to breed crops that are less susceptible to a broader range of pathogens, which then could be treated using fewer pesticides or other chemicals, and so produce more food.
Utilizing the Visualization in Plant Science
In the past, scientists have either visually stained whole plants to track the disease progression or performed microscopy on plant organs to make such observations. This laborious and inaccurate operation had other effects: it was not powerful enough to reveal all of the useful intelligence.
In contrast, the dOCT method provides a non-invasive imaging of plant infections with real-timeIMITIVE. The reflection of the light, which occurs after a very short time delay, allows the researchers to create 3D images that confirm the areas in which pathogens moved within the plant along its life cycle. This visual information is important for an understanding of the intricate processes which regulate plant-pathogen interactions and should lead to better virus control.
Investing in the Future of a Sustainable Food Chain
There are wide ranging possibilities of what this transformative technology could mean. The dOCT method offers new views researchers never had before into plant diseases, helping to be able to develop crops that are more resistant to pathogens at a much larger scale. They will need less pesticides, better resistance to the dry / extreme weather and they will have finally higher results.
As the world population grows, being able to produce food in a sustainable and efficient way is more important than ever. The Dutch researchers’ work was a breakthrough in this endeavor. This novel approach has the potential to enable scientists and breeders by providing them with tools to crop more resilient varieties that can cope with environmental-stress situations, as well as higher productivity helping feed an increasing world population size while support…ting food security, and reducing the environmental footprint of agriculture.
