Augmenting fungal culture/DNA reference capacity for routine diagnostic testing and research activities to support market access (domestic, import and export)

Funding period: 2022–2023
Lead: Stephan Brière
Total GRDI funding: $9,500

The Ottawa Plant Laboratory's plant pathology lab at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has a mandate to do testing focused on developing, verifying and validating diagnostics and methods to support access to domestic, import and export markets for a Canadian agricultural, forestry and horticultural commodities and resources. The plant pathology lab is responsible for identifying a vast number of fungal plant pathogens in thousands of species, which requires unique technical capabilities and extensive microbial resources.

The lab routinely tests for fungal plant pathogens in plant tissue and seed and, since 2005, has been at the forefront of integrating high throughput DNA-based testing assays to increase its ability to test plant pathogens quickly and accurately. To do this, the lab requires live microbial references for various purposes (e.g. proficiency panels and method development) to support morphological and DNA-based identifications.

The purpose of this project is to secure the microbiological resources necessary to support plant health testing and research activities and to build expert DNA-based sequence databases vital for enhancing the lab's identification activities.