Diagnosis of pine wilt disease using remote wireless sensing

PLoS One. 2021 Sep 24;16(9):e0257900. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0257900. eCollection 2021.

Abstract

Pine wilt disease caused by Bursaphelenchus xylophilus is a major tree disease that threatens pine forests worldwide. To diagnose this disease, we developed battery-powered remote sensing devices capable of long-range (LoRa) communication and installed them in pine trees (Pinus densiflora) in Gyeongju and Ulsan, South Korea. Upon analyzing the collected tree sensing signals, which represented stem resistance, we found that the mean absolute deviation (MAD) of the sensing signals was useful for distinguishing between uninfected and infected trees. The MAD of infected trees was greater than that of uninfected trees from August of the year, and in the two-dimensional plane, consisting of the MAD value in July and that in October, the infected and uninfected trees were separated by the first-order boundary line generated using linear discriminant analysis. It was also observed that wood moisture content and precipitation affected MAD. This is the first study to diagnose pine wilt disease using remote sensors attached to trees.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Discriminant Analysis
  • Nematoda / isolation & purification*
  • Pinus / parasitology*
  • Plant Diseases / parasitology*
  • Rain
  • Remote Sensing Technology / instrumentation*
  • Republic of Korea
  • Wireless Technology / instrumentation

Grants and funding

This study was sponsored by the “2018~19 Software Convergence Product Commercialization Support Program” through the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (Grant number: R-20180313-002619). The funder provided support in the form of salaries for authors [SB Park], but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section.