Project NanoSPoD

Nanoprobe based screening approach for plant pathogen detection

Progressive climate change and increasing transport of people and goods in a globalized world lead to an increased probability of spreading quarantine pests (QPs) and regulated non-quarantine pests (RNQPs). Hence, the development of innovative, rapid and robust diagnostic methods is required, which are of major importance for plant protection and serve to identify, monitor and develop appropriate management and control strategies. The NanoSPoD joint project aims to establish a nanoprobe-based magnetic separation method (NBMS) for plant pathogens, to develop new molecular biological detection methods and to use and evaluate NBMS together with new and already established diagnostic methods for the detection of QPs and RNQPs. The project is coordinated by the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology IME, collaboration partners are the bioanalytics company GeneCon International and the bioinformatics company Computomics. The project is supported by the Landwirtschaftskammer NRW and the company micromod Partikeltechnologie as associated partners. The aim of the project is to universally improve the sample quality for all downstream molecular biological analysis methods by employing NBMS, so that a higher sensitivity and robustness of these methods is attained. Depending on requirements and budget, detection methods will be established for different user groups, which even allow the identification of previously unknown pathogens. As new and promising detection approaches, an immunomagnetic analysis technique as well as an innovative pathogen screening method based on Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) will be investigated.

Funding Organization: Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) based on a decision of the Parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany via the Federal Office For Agriculture and Food (BLE) under the innovation support programme.

Principal Investigator: Krause, Hans-Joachim

Partner: Fraunhofer IME Aachen; GeneCon International GmbH, Baesweiler; Computomics GmbH, Tübingen

Associated partner: Landwirtschaftskammer Nordrhein-Westfalen, Köln; Micromod Partikeltechnologie GmbH, Rostock

Coordinator: Dr. Florian Schröper (Fraunhofer IME, Aachen)

Project start: 01.06.2021

Project end: 31.07.2024

Status: active