Invasive Alien Plant Pathogens: The Need of New Detection Methods

Invasive alien species are a major threat to natural and anthropogenic ecosystems and to the economy. Many invasive fungal species have severely impacted ecology and human lifestyle in the past. Most of them express a pathogenic lifestyle following introduction into a new region and hosts. They are usually cryptic during the introduction phase and hard to be identified, classified, and monitored. The increasing number of new alien pests coincide with the rapid increase in the volume and diversity of intercontinental trade in plants for planting, underlying the need to reduce the risk of their introduction with the development of molecular-based, inexpensive, rapid, accurate, and reliable methods that can identify and intercept plant pathogens even before symptoms occur in the new environment of diffusion. Applicative aerobiology, for instance, represents a challenging research line for the implementation of pest detection protocols during the early stage of fungal introduction, being capable to target aerial dispersed propagules. In addition to this, new metabarcoding protocols based on an innovative multigene approach, although not yet tested on fungi, are able to provide an output with very high taxonomic resolution and are likely to be considered in the next-future biosurveillance of invasive fungal pathogens.