Agricultural nano diagnostics for plant diseases monitoring

About author: Nidhi Verma completed her graduation from G.N Khalsa College, Mumbai. Followed by her Post-graduation from Institute of Science, Mumbai. Always been attracted by science as a child was inquisitive about practically everything. Because of her compassion, she decided to pursue science further. With time, learning new scientific areas became more appealing, but nano diagnostics stood out as a promising area as it offered to use nanotechnology in affordable disease diagnosis. Currently, a doctoral candidate at the Institute of Advanced Research, Gandhinagar working under the supervision of Dr. Alok Pandya, exploring myriad of avenues for disease detection using paper microfluidics. Her research area also includes developing paper-based electrochemical sensors for disease detection. Apart from being in research, she is also a canophilist at heart.  

How would you explain your research outcomes to the non-scientific community?

Agriculture is India’s most economically powerful sector, and it plays a key role in the country’s entire socio-economic framework. Agriculture employed more than half of the Indian workforce in 2018 and generated 17–18% of the country’s GDP. India has always been on the cutting edge of agriculture and a major participant in potato production. Despite the fact that, throughout time, due to viral infections, potato production has decreased dramatically over the globe.Typically, such viral diseases lie undiagnosed until a noticeable symptom appears, by which time the entire field has been infected, making it nearly difficult to save it. So, our developed immunodevice acts as a promising platform to detect such viruses at the earliest even when the symptoms do not appear saving acres of land from being affected by the virus.

How do these findings contribute to your research area?

There has always been a need for point-of-care-based testing platforms particularly considering the Indian scenario as the lab facilities are limited and usually far away from the farm setting. Our developed immunodevice will help in overcoming such shortfalls.

What was the exciting moment during your research?

My research journey up until now has been like a sinusoidal wave. However, there is always excitement going on in and around the lab but, the most exciting moment was when we met farmers and understood the need for this device, which was finally made and the demand was fulfilled by field testing of our developed immunodevice. The results were fascinating as it appeared with high accuracy. Because it was particularly difficult as the point of care immunodevice for plant virus detection was optimized in accordance to standard antigen so replicating the same in the field was way far difficult. Although I know there are more on the way.

What do you hope to do next?

The next target would be upgrading to a more robust and diverse version of the immunodevice for detection wherein we would be able to detect multiple viruses at once since there is always a possibility of more than one type of viruses affecting the plant making it imperative to make it the next step. As well developing an electrochemical-based microfluidic system for quantification of such viruses would be our next aim.

Where do you seek scientific inspiration from?

This journey itself has been an inspiration wherein we fail sometimes which itself motivates us to think in a different dimension and the constant pace at which the microfluidic field is evolving makes me work even harder in this field. Every day a new aspiring idea is put forward in the field which is always so unique in its own way. However, my constant support, inspiration, and motivation is my family and my guide.

How do you intend to help Indian science improve?

Indian science is evolving and growing each day with so many young minds working day in and day out to make a difference. However, a gap still needs to be a bridge between research and farmers. Commercialization of the developed product out of immense handwork of research should be the aim and research should be oriented in a way which inspires entrepreneurship among young researchers in an agricultural area. This will not only improve science but could even revolutionize few avenues which need the attention of young minds. Also, this initiative of Biopatrika is an outstanding effort to improve and bring budding scientists together.

Reference:

Verma, Nidhi, Budhi Sagar Tiwari and Alok Pandya. “Field Deployable Vertical Flow Based Immunodevice for Detection of Potato Virus Y in Potato Leaves.” ACS Agricultural Science & Technology, (2021). DOI: 10.1021/acsagscitech.1c00167.

Edited by: Nikita Nimbark