Applications and Assessment of Microbial Forensics in a Field Outbreak of Salmon Blotch of Onion in Israel

• Published in: Practical Tools for Plant and Food Biosecurity Vol. 8; pp. 257 - 287
• Main Authors: Fletcher, Jacqueline, Gamliel, Abraham, Stack, James P., Dehne, Heinz W., Isack, Yochai, Moncrief, Ian
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland Springer International Publishing AG 2017; Springer International Publishing
• Series: Plant Pathology in the 21st Century
• Subjects: Agricultural science; Analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA); Assessment; Attribution; BioNumerics minimum spanning tree; Biosecurity; Criteria; Decision tool; Dendrogram; Food & beverage technology; GeneAlex; Inter-simple sequence repeats (ISSR); Investigation; Law enforcement; Microbial forensics; Motive; Multilocus sequence typing (MLST); Mycotoxin; Network of excellence in security; Perimeter; Plant and food security; Plant pathogen forensics; Plant pathology & diseases; PLANTFOODSEC; Polymerase chain reaction (PCR); Population biology; Principle component analysis; Salmon blotch of onion; Sampling; Simple sequence repeats (SSR); Spatial distribution; Strain discrimination; Strain typing; STRUCTURE analysis; Traceback; Unweighted pair group with arithmetic mean (UPGMA); Weighting factor
• ISBN: 9783319468969; 3319468960
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-46897-6_13

Microbial forensics is a scientific discipline devoted to analyzing evidence from a bioterrorist act, biocrime, or inadvertent release of a microorganism/toxin with a goal of attribution (Breeze et al. 2005), linking a pathogen and/or a perpetrator to a specific biocrime or bioterrorst act. Attribution includes identifying the microbe(s) involved (Breeze et al. 2005) as well as those responsible. The components of microbial forensics described by Breeze et al. include (1) detection and identification of a pathogen; (2) bioinformatics, including genome sequencing and genetic databases; (3) strain repositories for pathogens or microbes of interest as well as their near-neighbors; (4) validation and standardization of forensic methods; and (5) rigorous attention to quality assurance steps. Because forensic casework is subject to vigorous challenge in a court of law, the rigor of standardization and validation of experimental, analytical and application methods goes beyond levels that are normal for typical research and management activities.