Evaluation of Metabarcoding Methods for Plant Disease Surveillance

The goal of this study was to evaluate two recently published universal primer sets targeting the DNA gyrase and RNA polymerase beta sub-unit genes (gyrB and rpoB respectively), relative to a plant discriminating 16S primer set (799F/115R) as disease surveillance tools. The primer sets were evaluated with a mock community of plant pathogenic bacteria and naturally infected citrus variegated chlorosis samples. Further validation of the gyrB metabarcoding method was carried out with additional spiked and naturally infected environmental DNA samples. This study aims to increase the accessibility of high-throughput sequencing for the general diagnostics and surveillance of plant-bacterial pathogens.