HOMED researchers develop a rapid, simple, specific and sensitive loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP)-based method for detection of the quarantine fungal pathogen Fusarium circinatum (=Gibberella circinata).

Fusarium circinatum is the causal agent of pitch canker, a lethal disease of pine and other conifers. Since F. circinatum is a quarantine organism, its timely detection could efficiently prevent its introduction into new areas or facilitate spread management in already infected sites.

Photo by Julio Javier Diez

In a HOMED-funded study by Dagmar Stehlíková, Nicola Luchi, Chiara Aglietti Alessia, Lucia Pepori, Julio Javier Diez and Alberto Santini, a sequence-specific probe LAMP assay for F. circinatum using a field-deployable portable instrument was developed. The assay was able to recognize the pathogen in host tissues in just 30 minutes, and the sensitivity of the assay made it possible to detect even small amounts of F. circinatum DNA (as low as 0.5 pg/μl). The high efficiency of this method suggests its use as a standard diagnostic tool during phytosanitary controls, as it addresses the new challenges in molecular diagnostics research, namely the rapid and accurate identification of the casual agent of plant disease.

Read the full paper here.