The Plant Clinic: Advancing Plant Disease Diagnostics and Monitoring
KEY POINTS- Develop reliable field monitoring tools and laboratory assays for plant disease diagnostics.
- Build and curate reference collections and data resources to support surveillance and research.
- Provide practical, hands-on training and expert support for professionals and students.
Project overview
Participants
More related research
Short summary
Research-driven plant disease diagnostics: we build field monitoring tools and lab assays, curate fungal reference collections, and provide hands-on training for professionals and students.
About the plant clinic
The Plant Clinic is a specialty laboratory with a focus on research in disease diagnostics, working in close collaboration with the Swedish Board of Agriculture (Jordbruksverket). The clinic handles diseases caused by microbial pathogens, viruses, and nematodes mainly in food and feed crops. The clinic does not handle weeds, insects, or quarantine pests, and does not perform toxicology assays. Of particular interest to the clinic are orphan/unidentified diseases, and emerging/re-emerging diseases for which there is a lack of expertise and/or detection methods.
The lab is located at SLU BioCentrum in Uppsala and is part of the Department of Plant Biology. The activities of the clinic are supervised by the head of department and a reference group that ensures good collaboration and complementarity with the activities of the Jordbruksverket and the Swedish Veterinary Agency (Statens veterinärmedicinska anstalt – SVA).
Activities
- Verification and validation of Koch’s postulates for diseases caused by non-quarantine microorganisms, viruses, and nematodes
- Development of disease diagnostics and monitoring tools for field applications.
- Development of analytical and molecular diagnostics methods for laboratory applications.
- Practical training in disease diagnostics for professionals and students.
Resources and collections
The clinic builds and maintains important libraries of plant-associated mycobiomes, including:
- DmorphX: a generic collection of fungal pathogens, endophytes, and epiphytes from various crop and non-crop hosts from Sweden.
- Specialty collections for Fusarium sp., Epicoccum sp., Zymoseptoria sp., Parastagonopora sp., and Pyrenophora sp.
The airborne analytics extension (under development)
The clinic has a first specialty extension for drones and GIS analytics that will be active at SLU’s research station in Lövsta (Uppsala). The extensions at SLU field stations are placed under the supervision of the Head of Forestry and Agricultural Operations at SLU.
Reference group
- Pär Ingvarsson (Department of Plant Biology, SLU)
- Victoria Thuillier (Head of Forestry and Agricultural Operations, SLU)
- Björn Andersson (Department of Forest Mycology and Plant Pathology, SLU)
- Gunnar Andersson (The Swedish Veterinary Agency, SVA)
Contact the clinic’s experts for further information
General inquiries and Microbial plant pathogens
Salim Bourras
salim.bourras@slu.se
Associate Professor in Plant Pathology, Department of Plant Biology.
Plant pathogenic nematodes
Maria Viketoft
maria.viketoft@slu.se
Associate Professor in Ecology, Department of Ecology
Plant viruses
Anders Kvarnheden
anders.kvarnheden@slu.se
Professor in Plant Virology, Department of Plant Biology
Publications
- Kaur, H., Vilvert, E., Corrales Gutiérrez, M.Á., Zhan, J., Douchkov, D., Desiderio, F., Vélëz, H. and Bourras, S. (2025) ‘Isolation and characterization of fungi associated with wheat heads and leaf blotch symptoms in Sweden’, European Journal of Plant Pathology. doi:10.1007/s10658-025-03096-z.
