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Mikko A, Villegas JA, Svensson D, Karlsson E, Esseen PA, Albrectsen BR, Lundin O, Forsman M, Berlin A, Stenberg P
iScience 28 (7) 112912 [2025-07-18; online 2025-06-16]
Crop pests and diseases increasingly challenge the global food system. To prepare for and detect outbreaks, surveillance plays an important role. Traditional monitoring methods are often organism-specific, making large-scale monitoring of crop pathogens and pests impractical. We here investigate the potential for using shotgun sequencing of airborne eDNA for large-scale surveillance of crop pathogens and pests. We show that it is possible to detect DNA from all types of organisms in air, and that DNA can be classified down to species level. However, the accuracy of the identification is highly dependent on the quality of reference genomes of both the pathogens or pests, and their close relatives present in the region. Finally, we find that observed degree of crop damages correlate with amount of DNA from crop pathogens and pests in air, showing the promise of this approach for surveillance of all types of crop pathogens and pests.
Bioinformatics Support for Computational Resources [Service]
NGI Uppsala (SNP&SEQ Technology Platform) [Service]
National Genomics Infrastructure [Service]
PubMed 40678541
DOI 10.1016/j.isci.2025.112912
Crossref 10.1016/j.isci.2025.112912
pmc: PMC12269458
pii: S2589-0042(25)01173-3