b'when subjected to machine learning analysis techniques could detect andGold and her colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison recently differentiate between late blight and blackleg diseases even before visiblepublished the research which showed how they used contact spectroscopy to symptoms were present, with high accuracy," Damian Bienkowski, a postdoc- non-destructively sense how plant pathogens differentially damage, impair, toral researcher at the James Hutton Institute, says in the release. and alter plant traits during the course of infection."It is predicted that if imaging with greater spectral and spatial resolutionLate blight pathotypes are usually defined as clonal lineages and asexual is used in the field, it will likely be able to map multiple diseases in growersdescendants of a single genotype. In their latest research, the group paired crops, enabling precise disease control options to be deployed with greatermachine learning-based hyperspectral analysis with a molecular assay to bet-efficiency." ter understand what pathogen processes might cause the ability to discrimi-nate between two late blight clonal lineages, the release says."Surprisingly, we find that our ability to differentiate between them was more accurate at the earliest stages of infectionbefore symptoms Researcher Finds Way to Detect Pre-Symptomatic Cases of Late Blight appeared rather than after," Gold says in the release. "This is the first-time A grape researcher at Cornell University found by using proximal and remotehyperspectral sensors have been used to distinguish between pathotypes and spectroscopy she was able to pre-symptomatically detect late blight infectionis an important step forward for the discipline of plant disease sensing."in potatoes, a news release from the university says. This research will be able to create a roadmap for the future use of hyper-Kaitlin Gold, an assistant professor in the plant pathology and plant-mi- spectral sensors as automated, non-destructive, and scalable tools to identify crobe biology section at the School of Integrative Plant Science at Cornellpathotype in real time, in both late blight and other pathosystems. University, and her colleagues were able to use hyperspectral sensors to measure light reflectance in the visible to shortwave infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum.LIFEGARDThe FIRST Biological Plant ActivatorLifeGard triggers a plants immunity to disease & has no MRLs.46 SPUDSMART.COM SUMMER 2020WWW.UAP.CA'