Nataša Mehle – författare

This open access book in the field of plant pest detection shows a constant demand in development and improvement of fast and reliable detection tools, especially for high-priority pests. This open access book describes and summarizes the whole process of the organization of test performance study (TPS) for these tools. The outcome of TPS, obtained through the evaluation of the performance of one or more diagnostic tests by several laboratories on defined samples, is the finding of the best performing test/s for particular pest and for specific uses. Nowadays the intensification of worldwide trade and associated controls increases the need for quality assurance accreditation and harmonization of laboratories practices. Therefore, such studies are very important, but, non-existent. Considering those facts, our goal was to develop guidelines, by using the data and experiences of involved partners, for further TPS in the field of plant health. Developed guidelines could be easily transferable to other microbiology fields.

This open access book in the field of plant pest detection shows a constant demand in development and improvement of fast and reliable detection tools, especially for high-priority pests. This open access book describes and summarizes the whole process of the organization of test performance study (TPS) for these tools. The outcome of TPS, obtained through the evaluation of the performance of one or more diagnostic tests by several laboratories on defined samples, is the finding of the best performing test/s for particular pest and for specific uses. Nowadays the intensification of worldwide trade and associated controls increases the need for quality assurance accreditation and harmonization of laboratories practices. Therefore, such studies are very important, but, non-existent. Considering those facts, our goal was to develop guidelines, by using the data and experiences of involved partners, for further TPS in the field of plant health. Developed guidelines could be easily transferable to other microbiology fields.

This work is to compile our current knowledge on GY phytoplasma biology at the genomic, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics level, as well as to summarize the approaches for their detection.Phytoplasma are the most poorly characterized plant pathogenic bacteria from the Mollicutes class. In recent years new biostatistics and bioinformatics approaches have improved our understanding of their biology and interactions with host grapevines and a great improvement has been made toward their molecular detection, both in laboratories and on-site. They have a broad range of plant hosts among the monocots and dicots, and diseases of many important crops are associated with these pathogens. At least ten taxonomically unrelated phytoplasmas, one of them a quarantine pest in Europe, have been associated with grapevine yellows diseases (GY), which have great economic impact on viticulture worldwide.