Innovative plant disease detection

A tool that may enable farmers to instantaneously detect plant diseases in the field is being developed by a team of researchers from North Carolina State University. Here’s how it works.

Disease signatures
When plants “breathe,” they release volatile organic compounds, better known as VOCs. However, when a plant is sick, the composition of those VOCs changes. Each disease causes different changes in the VOCs emitted during plant respiration. This means that it’s possible to associate VOC changes to specific diseases, an idea that led researchers to develop a device that can analyze plant VOCs and identify disease.

Portable disease detector
Currently, plant disease detection relies on molecular tests that take hours to perform. These tests have to be run in a laboratory setting, adding transport time to an already slow process. In contrast, the VOC device developed by researchers plugs into a smartphone and can analyze the VOCs released by a plant suspected of being sick on the spot. The whole process takes a mere 15 minutes.

For now, the detector can differentiate between 10 plants VOCs and effectively diagnose four diseases. This is a promising development that could provide farmers with an affordable and fast way to detect plant diseases before they harm crop yields.