‘Phytopathological strolls’ in the dual context of COVID-19 lockdown and IYPH2020: transforming constraints into an opportunity for public education about plant pathogens
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Abstract
The experience presented here relates to 2020, a particularly timely year for plant disease-related communication (‘International Year of Plant Health’ IYPH2020), but also a unique year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our goal was to illustrate the diversity and beauty of fungal plant pathogens through a naturalist approach that could be followed by any amateur. We achieved this end through ‘phytopathological strolls’, in which we observed and determined the origin of symptoms on diseased plants found in our garden, in the local streets, in nearby open spaces, and sharing this matter with a broad public. The lockdown imposed in France created an additional motivation to take up the challenge, and to involve our children, even under strong constraints, such as movement restrictions. We observed and described fungal pathogens through hundreds of photographs, shared our findings with a large audience on Twitter, and received feedback. The material used was deliberately simple and transportable: a digital reflex camera, an old microscope, a mobile phone, some books and an Internet connexion. Between March 17, 2020 and June 20, 2021 we found 196 plant pathogens, including 97 rusts, 27 powdery mildews and 28 septoria-like diseases. We discuss here the importance of promoting searches for plant pathogens, their description and conservation, through a combination of classical approaches and digital tools in tune with the times, such as Twitter, by treating pathogen identification like a detective game and, more surprisingly, by making use of the addictive nature of collection approaches, drawing a parallel with Pokémon Go.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2021.02.03.429201: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Like Yannelli & Saul (2020), we found that despite (maybe even thanks to) the limitations and difficulties associated with lockdown, everybody can explore their immediate surroundings and discover the diversity and beauty of …
SciScore for 10.1101/2021.02.03.429201: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Like Yannelli & Saul (2020), we found that despite (maybe even thanks to) the limitations and difficulties associated with lockdown, everybody can explore their immediate surroundings and discover the diversity and beauty of plant pathogens. We found this experience very encouraging, particularly given the likelihood of similar lockdown conditions being imposed again. Promoting the conservation of plant pathogens: Botanic gardens generally focus on plant conservation, but the conservation of native plant pathogens, as a component of local biodiversity, should also be considered. This point has already been made by Ingram (1999, 2002), and came up again in the context of the IYPH2020 (Ingram, 2020), through three initiatives of the BSPP: (i) the #WildPlantDisease Twitter challenge, in which we participated in late August, by posting some of the pathogen photographs presented in Appendix 1; (ii) the Welsh Rust Group, producing red data lists and census catalogues for native plant pathogens in Wales; (iii) the Wyre Forest Study Group, a citizen’s science research group studying the natural history of the Wyre Forest in the West Midlands, which has recently decided to survey native plant pathogens. The conservation of plant pathogens essentially occurs ex situ, in microbiological collections, the activities of which are co-ordinated by the World Federation for Culture Collections (Hawksworth, 1997). Strict biotrophic pathogens, such as rust and powdery mildews, which account for ...
Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We found bar graphs of continuous data. We recommend replacing bar graphs with more informative graphics, as many different datasets can lead to the same bar graph. The actual data may suggest different conclusions from the summary statistics. For more information, please see Weissgerber et al (2015).
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No funding statement was detected.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
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