Combination of nuclear magnetic resonance and hyperspectral reflectance for the identification of Erwinia amylovora sp. infected pear leaves

In this contribution the effects of infections by Erwinia amylovora (Ea), the agent of fire blight,on the metabolic composition of pear leaves are highlighted. In search for a combined approach[1]that could give a comprehensive information on the metabolome of infected pear leaves, we focused our attention on NMR and Hyperspectral Reflectance(HR) techniques, as NMR easily provides information on molecules with relatively high concentration (typically, such molecules correspond to primary metabolites) in the plants while HR supplies a rapid information on the plant status.HR-NMR covariance analysis allowed to transfer metabolome information obtained by NMR to HR bands through a knowledge transfer approach, and permitted to obtain maps (Fig. 1) which represent the specific infection status of the pear plants where HR bands can be determined as infection markers