F1K9 Canine Trainer / Instructor Bryan Bice with agricultural disease Detection Dog (in-training) Kos (a Vizsla dog) who strikes his signature pose to indicate a diseased plant in a rows of citrus; part of their work with U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists from Fort Pierce, FL, to train dogs to detect huanglongbing (HLB; a.k.a. citrus greening) in citrus, squash vein yellowing virus (SqVYV; cause of viral watermelon vine decline) in squash, and tomato chlorotic spot virus (TCSV) in pepper plants at this training session in New Smyrna Beach, FL, on Feb. 25, 2021.
F1K9, a licensed canine detection service company. When the dogs detect - smell - a diseased plant, its response is to sit or lie facing the plant until it is rewarded with a few seconds of play.
Dogs can be trained to detect specific bacterial or viral pathogens in any part of a plant with greater than 99% accuracy, significantly faster than laboratory tests, and before visible symptoms are obvious. Conventional analysis typically uses only one leaf from a plant. At the early stages of infection, before the disease spreads throughout the plant, a healthy leaf may be taken from an infected plant resulting in a negative laboratory test. In contrast, dogs sample the entire plant while walking by and sniffing it. For more information, please go to ars.usda.gov/news-events/news/research-news/2020/trained-dogs-are-the-most-efficient-way-to-hunt-citrus-industrys-biggest-threat/. USDA Media by Lance Cheung. Original public domain image from Flickr
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