Agricultural Detection Dogs: Measuring Capability and Enhancing Capacity

Agricultural loss due to insects and pathogens exceeds 40 billion USD a year. Ourlong-termgoal is to reduce the impact of invasive speciesandagricultural diseases through early in-the-field detection mechanisms. The goal of this project is to evaluate the capabilities of agricultural detection dogs to detect two threats to the United States' 6.5 billion dollar grape industry and evaluate the United States' capacity for rapidly deploying agricultural detection dogs to remediate and prevent spread of inavsive insects or pathogens. We will achieve this project's goal through a series of objectives: 1) Evaluate canine olfactory capability to detect and discriminate Powdery Mildey in grape plant leaves determine the earliest stage of infection detectable with canine olfaction, 2) Determine canine olfactory detection accuracy for spotted lantern fly eggs and quantify dogs' limit of detection, and 3) Assess the feasibility of training and deploying citizen science owner-dog teams as a cost-effective canine detection technology for producers.