Early optical detection of infection with brown rust in winter wheat by chlorophyll fluorescence excitation spectra

The recently developed sensor device is an efficient technique to differentiate the infected and not infected wheat plants as soon as four days after inoculation. The measured fluorescence quotients correlate high positive with the polyphenol contents and the relative amount of fungal DNA. An untreated healthy control was measured parallelly, in order to associate the increased synthesis of polyphenols to the fungal infection definitely.