I-Corps: Commercialization of Portable Sensor for Crop Disease Detection

拥有中等规模农场的植物农民每年花费数万美元购买农药和杀菌剂作为预防措施，每英亩的成本约为210美元，并且需要在整个季节中多次使用。通过减少频繁的“按需施用”和/或在大片农田上选择性施用来减少农药的使用，可以最大限度地减少不必要的喷洒，并为植物农民提供巨大的环境和经济效益。目前使用的农作物疾病检测方法耗时、破坏性大、需要熟练的分析人员、需要实验室设置，不幸的是，既不能提供实时监测，也不能提供现场部署的可能性。一种用于早期发现感染的快速、实时、非破坏性的移地方法将有助于作物生产者控制感染，防止疾病传播，从而避免造成巨大损失。在这个项目中，该团队开发了一种基于酶-纳米材料复合材料的新型传感器平台，用于高度选择性地检测作物和收获后产品中的疾病。该项目发展的基础科学包括开发基于酶-纳米材料复合材料的安培生物传感器，用于高度选择性检测水杨酸甲酯，水杨酸甲酯是植物和植物部位在病原真菌感染过程中释放的一种化感物质。拟议中的创新将直接惠及农业、食品加工和处理行业的三个不同客户群。估计花费几千美元，一个中等规模农场的农作物生产者可以在一年的时间里节省数万美元的不必要的预防性喷洒。每次检测只需几美元，食品质量和安全检查员就能识别食品变质，从而节省数百万美元的食品损失。

Vegetative farmers who own an average size farm spend tens of thousands of dollars each year on pesticide and fungicide as preventive measure that costs about $210/acre and needs several applications through the seasons. Minimizing the pesticide usage through less frequent 'on-demand application' and/or selective application on the huge crop field could minimize unnecessary sprayings and provide huge environmental and economic benefits for vegetative farmers. Currently used methods for disease detection in agricultural crops are time consuming, destructive, demand skilled analysts, require a laboratory set-up and unfortunately do not offer either real time monitoring or on-field deployment possibilities. A rapid, real-time, non-destructive, ex-situ method for early detection of infections will help crop producers to contain the infection, prevent the spread of disease and hence avoid colossal damage. In this project, the team has developed a novel enzyme-nanomaterial composite based sensor platform for highly selective detection of diseases in crops and post-harvest produce.The fundamental science developed in this project involves the development of amperometric biosensors based on enzyme-nanomaterial composite for highly selective detection of methyl salicylate, an allelochemical released by plants and plant parts during pathogenic fungal infections. The proposed innovation will directly benefit three different customer segments in the agricultural, food processing and handling industry. At an estimated cost of a few thousand dollars, a crop producer with mid-size farm could save tens of thousands of dollars over a period of a year on unnecessary preventive sprayings. At only a few dollars per test, food quality and safety inspectors could identify spoilage and save millions of dollars in food damage.