New genomic detection tools will safeguard Canadian forests and farms from destructive pests and pathogens
University of British Columbia forestry professor Dr. Richard Hamelin and his partners at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) have a “most unwanted list” — 50 invasive pests and pathogens that could cause an ecological and financial disaster if they infest the country’s forests and farms.
Alien species are responsible for annual losses of about $2 billion in Canada’s forestry and agriculture industries, but it can take days or weeks to identify problematic invaders at ports of entry. Species without morphological features, such as microscopic fungi, have to be cultured in a Petri plate to determine if they are a threat. Some only become virulent when they are inside a host.
Predictive new biosurveillance tools allow laboratory technicians to rapidly and accurately ascertain whether a pathogen will cause harm by amplifying and analyzing the DNA from a single cell, a development that will help keep Canada’s forests and farms healthy and productive in an era of climate change and increasing international trade.
“The key to any intervention is early action,” says Dr. Hamelin, who parlayed earlier Genome Canada-funded research exploring DNA-based diagnostic tests and forest pathogen sequencing into a three-year GAPP (Genomic Applications Partnership Program) project that is transferring this technology from the lab to the real world. “Once the genie is out of the bottle, it’s very hard to contain it.”
