The Use of Volatile Organic Compounds in Sustainable Management of Pests and Diseases

Effective and sustainable management of pests and diseases depends on their early and rapid detection in order to prevent their spread to new locations. This detection is hampered by the lack of easy-to-use detection tools that can be broadly applied in the field and quickly return reliable results. Remote sensing of changes in volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions and profiles of plants responding to biotic stresses would allow for non-destructive large-scale mapping of pests and diseases. Exploiting VOC-based insect communication and orientation by confusion techniques has become a major part of sustainable pest management, but still needs more application. This concept has not been explored to interrupt the close host-pathogen interactions that lead to disease.

Rapid development in sensor technology allows the detection of minute amounts of VOCs, but identifying volatile signals that are pest and pathogen-specific enough remains difficult. Identifying and describing the plants repertoire of volatile responses to biotic stresses can open new ways of practical applications; from pest and disease detections to manipulation of host-pest and host-pathogen interactions.

Themes:
• Pest and disease detection
• Pest and disease communication and interactions with their hosts
• Biomining of VOCs produced by pests, diseases and their hosts
• In-field VOC sampling technologies
• Point and continuous VOC measurement methods and devices
• Low-cost, field-portable VOC sensors
• Data science related to VOC recognition and analysis.

Types of manuscripts:
• Full research articles
• Methodology papers
• Reviews
• Short notes on discovering new compounds and their role in pest/pathogen-host interactions.

Keywords: Horticulture, Early detection, chemical ecology, Import control, electronic noses, site specific control, volatile sensors

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.