CANINE DETECTION OF EXOTIC AND EMERGING PLANT PATHOGENS

The procedures for training, evaluating and deploying canine detector dogs for pathogen detection have been extensively detailed for other bacterial and viral pathogens. In brief, the initial training begins with a proprietary sensitization process. Canines are rewarded for alerting on the proper target by providing a few minutes of play with the handler. Dogs will be sensitized via a series of randomized (blind) diseased and non-diseased sources to ensure the canines are alerting correctly at a high degree of accuracy. Typically this is done in randomized field trials, recording environmental conditions during each trial, and re-randomizing between each validation. We plan to train multiple dogs to detect each target pathogen. Moreover, because the sensitivity and accuracy of detection across host species and cultivars may not be the same â¿¿ presumably because the volatile composition or concentration may differ â¿¿ advanced training will be conducted in both an experimental greenhouse, field plots, orchards and vineyards on a collection of infected and non-infected cultivars and species to ensure that the canines are responding to a broad array of host types. The initial imprinting is anticipated to take 4 months to complete. Once trained, dogs will be field-tested in commercial plantings. They will be tasked to locate infected plants within plantings of selected crops, and relative to vegetable viruses will be used to scout field perimeters to locate potential reservoir weed hosts. All â¿¿alertsâ¿Â