Project description
Diagnosing banana diseases in the field
The banana plant is threatened by various diseases, which lead to significant yield losses in banana fruit production worldwide. Given that bananas are the most consumed fruit in Europe, the EU-funded INDICANTS project proposes to develop a number of tools that can be used directly on site to diagnose banana diseases caused by bacteria or fungi. In particular, a point of care diagnostics kit capable of detecting multiple pathogens at once is expected to significantly improve the efficiency of surveillance and plant disease management. The project's deliverables can be immediately implemented to improve the productivity of bananas and ensure food security.
Objective
Bananas are major staple in developing countries and the most eaten fruit in Europe. Global banana production is constrained by several diseases that are responsible for yield losses and low productivity of bananas and severely compromise food security. Particularly banana production is seriously threatened by four vascular diseases, Fusarium wilt disease of banana caused by the fungus Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. cubense (Foc), Moko and banana blood diseases, caused by Ralstonia solanacearum and R. syzygii subsp. celebesensis, respectively) and Xanthomonas wilt of banana caused by Xanthomonas vasicola pv. musacearum. Efficiency of surveillance and plant disease management requires the availability of Point of care (POC) diagnostics that can be operated directly on site. INDICANTS project focuses on (i) the development of a low-cost multi-pathogens LAMP (Loop-mediated isothermal amplification) detection kit, and its validation via an interlaboratory test and field surveys. (ii) the evaluation of an emergent technology (CRISPR/Cas12a) for the diagnosis of Foc. (iii) the test of an innovative microneedle patch for DNA extraction from plant. This project relies on a two-way transfer of knowledge and expertise between the applicant and Stellenbosch University: the applicant will access to areas where the diseases are present, will acquire through hands-on training and training-through-research, new expertise and skills in genetics/biotechnology, thereby strengthening the future career prospects. The partner organisation will gain experience and knowledge on bacterial banana diseases and LAMP method. Actions of protection and exploitation of the outputs will be set up, with the involvement of an industrial partner. Besides the scientific publications and conferences, the results will be disseminated to different audiences: the general public (website, press and TV), plant protection services (workshops) MSc students (lectures), schoolchildren (Platform visits).
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesgeneticsDNA
- agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesagriculturehorticulturefruit growing
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesmicrobiologymycology
- social scienceseconomics and businesseconomicsproduction economicsproductivity
- humanitiesother humanitieslibrary sciencesknowledge organization
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Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinator
75016 Paris
France