Application of molecular tools in detecting zoonotic pathogens in organic fertilizers and liquid supplements.

The use of organic fertilizers and liquid supplements for crop production is rapidly growing as an alternative system to conventional agriculture. However, very little is known about the public health issues related to pathogens. This study endeavors to identify the important zoonotic pathogens with the current molecular diagnostic tools, Loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) and Recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA), against the conventional pathogen detection.

Phylogenetic tracking of current porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) strains in the Philippines.

To trace the possible route of introduction of porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV), the phylogenetic relationships of PEDV strains in the regions of epidemicity in the Philippines to PEDV strains that are endemic in other countries were investigated. Partial nucleotide sequences of the S1 spike gene was determined from the PEDV-positive samples and compared with S1 sequences from other countries. Phylogenetic analysis indicated that PEDV strains in the Philippines segregate into two groups.