WSU researchers are putting man’s best friend to work in a new way. A two-year project to help cherry growers is underway that has promising early results. In the study, two dogs have been trained to sniff out Little Cherry Disease. LCD affects the fruit of a cherry tree, making the cherries small and unripe. Growers don’t even know a tree is infected until the cherries grow. By that point, the disease may have spread. The only current solution is to rip out the tree and plant a new one, usually taking about five years to mature. Researchers say there is a scientific test, but it’s expensive, unreliable, and takes a long time compared to walking a dog through an orchard.
Associate Professor in WSU’s Plant Pathology department Scott Harper says “…speed and sensitivity are the main takeaways of our study…the dogs are excellent at picking up low concentrations of the pathogen…the dogs are also faster.”
In recent tests the dogs were presented with nearly 200 plants and found, not only the seven positive trees, but also found one the researchers didn’t know was positive. In another study of nearly 14-hundred plants, the dogs had a success rate of 99.72%.
Trainer Jessica Kohntopp has previously worked with dogs to sniff out COVID-19, and viruses infecting tomatoes, squash, and citrus. For this job, she trained a Dutch Shepherd named “Humma”, and a Belgian Malinois named “Aika”. She says “for them, it’s a game, not a job…they’re so excited when they find the positive plants.”
