Dog Sleuths Sniff Out Crop Disease Hitting Citrus Trees

KCRA ^ | Feb 3, 2020 | Christina Larson

[nickcarraway]

Dog detectives might be able to help save ailing citrus groves, research published Monday suggests.

Scientists trained dogs to sniff out a crop disease called citrus greening that has hit orange, lemon and grapefruit orchards in Florida, California and Texas. The dogs can detect it weeks to years before it shows up on tree leaves and roots, the researchers report.

Advertisement “This technology is thousands of years old – the dog’s nose,” said Timothy Gottwald, a researcher with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and a co-author of the study. “We’ve just trained dogs to hunt new prey: the bacteria that causes a very damaging crop disease.”

Dog sleuths are also faster, cheaper and more accurate than people collecting hundreds of leaves for lab analysis, according to the study in the Proceedings of National Academies of Sciences. Citrus greening - also called huanglongbing - is caused by a bacteria that is spread by a tiny insect that feeds on the leaves and stems of citrus trees. Once a tree is infected, there's no cure.

The disease has also hurt citrus crops in Central and South America and Asia.

In one experiment in a Texas grapefruit orchard, trained dogs were accurate 95% of the time in distinguishing between newly infected trees and healthy ones.

“The earlier you detect a disease, the better chance you have at stopping an epidemic” by culling infected trees, explained Gottwald.

Matteo Garbelotto, who studies plants at the University of California, Berkeley, says the new research elevates the study of dog sleuths in orchards from anecdotal to field-tested, showing that dogs can detect an infection well before current methods. Garbelotto has been involved in similar research but had no role in new study.

Another plant scientist, Laura Sims, of Louisiana Tech University, said she was impressed by the rigorousness of the research. She applauded the steps taken to determine if the dogs were sniffing out the bacteria itself or a plant’s response to an infection.

To do that, the researchers infected a variety of unrelated plants with the bacteria in a laboratory. The dogs were still able to pick out the infected plants.

“You’ve seen dogs working in airports, detecting drugs and explosives,” said Gottwald. “Maybe soon you will see them working on more farms."

[GOPJ]

It’s orange GROVES.... not orchards...

[Equine1952]

Well they must be well trained. My two just pee on the trees and come back for a treat.

[KarlInOhio]

Is there anything else for dogs to sniff? Maybe the ballots in Iowa which are stinking pretty badly.

[Norski]

Study shows dogs can accurately sniff out cancer in blood
Canine cancer detection could lead to new noninvasive, inexpensive ways to detect cancer

Date:
April 8, 2019
Source:
Experimental Biology
Summary:
Dogs have smell receptors 10,000 times more accurate than humans’, making them highly sensitive to odors we can’t perceive. A new study has shown that dogs can use their highly evolved sense of smell to pick out blood samples from people with cancer with almost 97 percent accuracy. The results could lead to new cancer-screening approaches that are inexpensive and accurate without being invasive.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/04/190408114304.htm

[Norski]

Bed Bug Sniffing Dogs-How they smell, Sense, Roscoe, Breeds & Cost

“One of the uncommon natural means to detect bugs is by use of bed bug sniffing dogs. . .”

https://pestbugs.org/bed-bugs/bed-bug-sniffing-dogs/