ABSTRACT
Accurate diagnostic technologies for early detection of plant diseases have become critical for ensuring agricultural sustainability and global food security. Although nucleic acid and antibody-based molecular tests are gold-standard approaches for diagnosing plant diseases, the analytical procedures are difficult and time consuming. Moreover, these approaches lack precision, specificity, dependability, and speed, and hence are often unsuitable for in-situ analysis. Low-cost solutions to improve the accuracy and speed of plant pathogen detection are required. As a result, there is a lot of interest in creating biosensing devices that can identify pathogens early and accurately. Nanotechnology, nanoparticles, and quantum dots have emerged as critical instruments for the rapid and precise detection of a specific biological signature. This chapter focuses on diverse plant diseases and the prerequisites for a reliable, rapid, and cost-effective testing procedure, as well as novel biosensing technologies for detecting illnesses of field plants at their early stages of growth.
