Modern Technologies to Detect Fungi That Cause Diseases to Agricultural Crops: A review

Background: Fungal species that parasitize crops cause significant losses annually as they affect the quality and quantity of crops. Infected crops are considered a poor product that negatively affects the local and international agricultural sector. Therefore, the rapid and accurate early detection of the pathogen is crucial for the crop and to avoid losses. A loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) assay is used to detect about 100 pg fragments of DNA genes per reaction, which accurately detects fungal infections. This assay is used after isothermal amplification to detect genes without the use of PCR. In addition, the analysis of the whole genome (AGE), a global method for determining micro genes, includes experimental practice analysis and bioinformatics testing. Recent tests to detect pathogenic fungi include isothermal amplification analysis, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) techniques, overlapping, biomagnetic, and quantum biometric methods. One of the modern methods is the bioinformatics approach, which involves comparing the entire gene to identify distinctive and specialized areas of the fungus and designing polymer interaction tests for the species and genus to be diagnosed. Objective: The current study aims to survey accurate and rapid methods for diagnosing fungi that infect local crops, with the goal of controlling these infections, finding solutions, and preventing crop damage. Conclusion: Due to the increase in pathogenic fungi that cause plant diseases, there is a need to dedicate efforts to following developments in modern biological and molecular techniques and to work on the diagnosis of new fungal species. The traditional detection of pathological fungi yields dubious and inaccurate results, which do not facilitate effective treatment against this pathogenic fungus. It has proven its efficiency in accurately and rapidly diagnosing fungal species and diseases that do not exhibit symptoms. Although many assays focus on polymer chain reaction, most recent studies tend to use quantitative polymer chain reaction on a vast scale for quantitative measurement and differentiation between the factors causing fungal pests on plants, especially when the sample quantity is too small to detect, where the Lamb technique has succeeded in discovering many fungal species such as Alternaria spp., Fusarium spp., Puccinia spp., Colletotrichum spp., and Foma spp.. By amplifying the genomes of samples, modern genetic techniques have also succeeded in identifying fungal species and comparing them with the dolphin data without prior knowledge.