Washington State University project aims to expand early pathogen detection in potato crops

A new Washington State University-led project will help potato growers safeguard domestic and international markets and maintain high-quality potatoes for consumers around the world. 

Funded by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture’s Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI), the three-year, nearly USD 1 million project explores and supports expanded testing for diseases that damage potato crops, with a broader goal of guarding the U.S. food supply from biological threats. 

Chakradhar Mattupalli, an assistant professor of plant pathology at the WSU Mount Vernon Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center:

"We need to detect pathogens early, accurately, and quickly to avoid large crop losses, helping fewer people around the world go hungry."

Farmers who grow potatoes must test to ensure their crops are free of viruses and other pathogens. Unchecked, viral, bacterial, and fungal diseases cause crop damage and tremendous financial and food losses.

A test recently developed by the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) allows growers to take samples of their crop, send the DNA and RNA to labs, and get results in around two weeks as to whether their potatoes are infected with a virus. 

However, the potato industry still lacks a way to test for multiple pathogens on a nationwide scale, Mattupalli said. To address this challenge, Mattupalli and colleagues’ project has three primary objectives:

• Develop a testing lab to check large volumes of potato samples for viruses.
• Investigate if the testing protocol for viruses in potatoes can be expanded to detect fungal or bacterial pathogens.
• Create training opportunities for students and field personnel on how to properly collect samples from plants and how to ship them to the lab for testing.

Chakradhar Mattupalli:

"It’s a huge advantage when you don’t have to ship potatoes to testing locations and wait so long to get results. It took many years to develop this pathogen detection protocol, so now we want to expand this testing ability to make sure all potato growers benefit."

Leading the work with USDA-ARS colleagues in Ithaca, New York, and at Colorado State University, Mattupalli hopes to discover if this type of testing works for other crops.

Chakradhar Mattupalli:

"If we develop a sample collection and preservation system that works in potatoes, we want to see if it will work in other field and small fruit crops such as wheat and blueberries."