Changing the diagnostic paradigm for sugarcane: development of a mill-based diagnostic for ratoon stunting disease in crude cane juice

Sriti Burman; Michael G Mason; Jessica Hintzsche; Yiping Zou; Lucy Gibbs; Laura MacGillycuddy; Robert C Magarey; José R Botella

doi:10.3389/fpls.2023.1257894

Changing the diagnostic paradigm for sugarcane: development of a mill-based diagnostic for ratoon stunting disease in crude cane juice

Front Plant Sci. 2023 Oct 12:14:1257894. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2023.1257894. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Sriti Burman¹, Michael G Mason¹, Jessica Hintzsche¹, Yiping Zou¹, Lucy Gibbs², Laura MacGillycuddy³, Robert C Magarey³, José R Botella¹

Affiliations

¹ Plant Genetic Engineering Laboratory, School of Agriculture and Food Sustainability, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia.
² Sugar Research Australia, Brisbane, QLD, Australia.
³ Sugar Research Australia, Tully, QLD, Australia.

Abstract

The availability of efficient diagnostic methods is crucial to monitor the incidence of crop diseases and implement effective management strategies. One of the most important elements in diagnostics, especially in large acreage crops, is the sampling strategy as hundreds of thousands of individual plants can grow in a single farm, making it difficult to assess disease incidence in field surveys. This problem is compounded when there are no external disease symptoms, as in the case for the ratoon stunting disease (RSD) in sugarcane. We have developed an alternative approach of disease surveillance by using the crude cane juice expressed at the sugar factory (mill). For this purpose, we optimized DNA extraction and amplification conditions for the bacterium Leifsonia xyli subsp xyli, the causal agent of RSD. The use of nucleic acid dipsticks and LAMP isothermal amplification allows to perform the assays at the mills, even in the absence of molecular biology laboratories. Our method has been validated using the qPCR industry standard and shows higher sensitivity. This approach circumvents sampling limitations, providing RSD incidence evaluation on commercial crops and facilitating disease mapping across growing regions. There is also potential is to extend the technology to other sugarcane diseases as well as other processed crops.

Keywords: DNA dipsticks; LAMP; RSD; crop diagnostics; ratoon stunting disease; sugarcane.

Grants and funding

The authors declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. The authors would like to acknowledge Sugar Research Australia (SRA) and the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, Australia, for funding to projects entitled “RSD at the sugar factory-disease detection blueprint” (2019/003) and “Pre-commercial development, testing and validation of RSD Lamp assay for sugar mill roll-out” (2021/002).