Advancements and Emerging Trends in the Detection of Sweet Potato Diseases: A Comprehensive Review

Sweet potato is a crop with high yield and adaptability that plays a crucial role in agricultural production and daily life. However, in recent years, the yield and quality of sweet potatoes have been increasingly affected by pathogens, such as fungi, bacteria, and viruses. Rapid and accurate identification and detection of diseases is critical for sustainable sweet potato production. This review first provides a systematic overview of the common diseases that affect sweet potato production, including their pathogens, symptoms, and geographical distribution. Subsequently, we discuss the advantages and challenges of traditional methods, molecular biology-based techniques, and emerging detection technologies for the identification of sweet potato diseases. We believe that the integration of new materials and technologies with artificial intelligence to develop rapid, sensitive, and accurate field-detection techniques or portable detection devices for sweet potato diseases represents a promising direction for future research.