Accurate and sensitive detection of shrimp pathogens is essential for effective disease diagnosis and management in aquaculture. In this study, A) a manual mincing of shrimp tissues and separate extraction for DNA and RNA on the Promega Maxwell RSC system and B) automate shrimp tissue homogenization and total nucleic acid extraction using the IndiMag 2 and the prefilled IndiMag Pathogen IM2 Cartridge were compared. Three representative pathogens White Spot Syndrome Virus (WSSV), Vibrio parahaemolyticus, and Yellow Head Virus (YHV).
Both extraction workflows successfully yielded nucleic acids suitable for qPCR, but workflow B with the automate shrimp tissue homogenization, with the IndiMag 2 and prefilled IndiMag Pathogen IM2 Cartridge provided lower Ct values, particularly at higher dilution levels, indicating greater sensitivity at low-concentration pathogen loads. Precision testing strongly supports repeatability of the runs with an average intra-run standard deviation ranging from 0.07 to 0.24 for high concentrations and 0.08 to 0.29 for low concentrations nearing the endpoint dilutions.