Side-by-Side Comparison of Post-Entry Quarantine and High Throughput Sequencing Methods for Virus and Viroid Diagnosis

Abstract

Rapid and safe access to new plant genetic stocks is crucial for primary plant industries to remain profitable, sustainable, and internationally competitive. Imported plant species may spend several years in Post Entry Quarantine (PEQ) facilities, undergoing pathogen testing which can impact the ability of plant industries to quickly adapt to new global market opportunities by accessing new varieties. Advances in high throughput sequencing (HTS) technologies provide new opportunities for a broad range of fields, including phytosanitary diagnostics. In this study, we compare the performance of two HTS methods (RNA-Seq and sRNA-Seq) with that of existing PEQ molecular assays in detecting and identifying viruses and viroids from various plant commodities. To analyze the data, we tested several bioinformatics tools which rely on different approaches, including direct-read, de novo, and reference-guided assembly. We implemented VirusReport, a new portable, scalable, and reproducible nextflow pipeline that analyses sRNA datasets to detect and identify viruses and viroids. We raise awareness of the need to evaluate cross-sample contamination when analyzing HTS data routinely and of using methods to mitigate index cross-talk. Overall, our results suggest that sRNA analyzed using VirReport provides opportunities to improve quarantine testing at PEQ by detecting all regulated exotic viruses from imported plants in a single assay.