An Overview of Application and Advancements of the Lateral Flow Assay Technique in Effective Detection of Fungal Phytopathogens

In the current era, culture-based conventional method of identification of food pathogens is not highly preferred as it is time consuming and requires to be performed by a skilled microbiologist in a laboratory. In recent decades, evident progress has been achieved in the adoption of molecular techniques as a replacement for culture-based techniques. In this background, lateral flow assay (LFA) is one such molecular technique that is proven to be a reliable approach for the detection of microorganisms. The technique is based on the interaction of natural and/or synthetic biomolecules such as antigen-antibody or DNA-DNA or probe DNA-DNA. This assay is easy to perform, rapid, and, more notably, is a point-of-care diagnostic tool. Hence, it has been successfully developed and commercially used in several diagnostic fields. The performance ease of a given LFA is also attributed to its characteristic feature that it does not require a skilled person or a laboratory to perform the assay. In this chapter, the recent developments and applications of LFA, specifically in the agriculture field for the detection of fungal pathogens that infect plants and plant products (phytopathogens), are explained and discussed at length with suitable examples.