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Moving disease diagnostics from the laboratory to the field could provide significant time and cost savings for the pig industry.
This was one of the key topics covered at the 2015 BPEX Innovation Conference, ‘A glance into the future’, held at Stoneleigh Park.
Currently being trialled in the plant sector, Dr Neil Boonham from Fera Science Ltd explained the importance of early disease detection to the plant industry and transferrable opportunities for pigs.
“Diagnostic tests in laboratories often take a couple of days to present results, by which stage disease is often set in and problems are therefore harder to treat. This is why early detection is so important. We need to be able to speed up disease identification to aid effective treatment.
“So far we’ve developed and trialled a selection of novel diagnostic technologies for use in the field and have seen positive results.
“Rapid testing lateral flow devices and loop-medicated isothermal amplification (LAMP) technologies have successfully made a diagnosis within 15 minutes or less, and proved simple and robust to use.”
Dr Boonham is confident that both the pig and plant industries will benefit from in-field diagnostic technologies in the future.
“With diagnostics slowly moving out of laboratories and into the field, I truly believe that both pig producers and plant growers will be able to reap the benefits sooner than we think.
“What’s really important is that the technologies trialled to date are quicker and not as costly as tests carried out in laboratories.”
Videos and presentations from the 2015 BPEX Innovation Conference, ‘A glance into the future’ are all available online at: http://www.bpex.org.uk/events/conferences/2015/innovation-conference/
May 29, 2015. BPEX
