Grant: Applied Research and Development Grants - Level 2

The domestication of good bacteria and fungi from soil and their introduction and implementation in modern agriculture is of paramount importance for reducing environmental damage linked to land-use increase. When land is used intensively for agricultural production, soil fertility declines rapidly. When agro-chemicals are used to mitigate the nutrient loss and increase annual crop yields, it repeatedly leads to serious environmental problems in addition to economic losses. The use of beneficial microorganisms in agriculture can preserve soil health and ensures sustainable use of non-renewable resources in addition to help increase the crop quality and yield while greatly reducing agro-chemicals associated cost per hectare. Hence, the introduction of beneficial microorganisms in agriculture is of critical importance. We recently observed technological improvements in the quality of those microorganisms mass-production and in the determination of a correct shelf life for those biological products. Despite these advances, one of the most critical points in biological fertilizer production is the lack of appropriate tools for precise and direct tracing of these organisms in the field. There is a real need to develop reliable and fast methods for quantifying these introduced beneficial microbial species. In that regard, the isothermal amplification technology using recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA) is a powerful molecular technique that has proven successful when used directly in the field for diagnosis. The method has been widely used due to its affordable price, high sensitivity, short reaction times, robustness and simplicity. This industry-driven project aims to develop a low-cost, semi quantitative RPA-based method for fast and reliable detection of beneficial microorganisms in environmental samples. This technique will meet the increased market demand for reliable microbial diagnosis services in the field.