Advances in Plant Disease Management

This book focuses on recent advances in genomics and genetic improvement of the tomato crop, and production systems, and center around the following themes: disease and pest management in tomato production, and breeding tools and improvement of the tomato.

Blast is an important foliar disease that infects the majority of cereal crops like rice, finger millet, pearl millet, foxtail millet and wheat, and thus results in a huge economic impact. The pathogen is responsible for causing epidemics in many crops and commonly shifts to new hosts. Magnaporthe spp. is the most prominent cause of blast disease on a broad host range of grasses including rice as well as other species of Poaceae family. To date, 137 members of Poaceae hosting this fungus have been described in fungal databases.

This edited book is a compilation of the chapters on the recent advances made in the field of disease management in various field crops. It covers host resistance, regulatory mechanism as well as non-chemical methods and computer-based applications in disease management. Molecular marker assisted selection, proteomic approaches, CRISPR-Cas mediated technology to improve food quality and minimize negative public health impact associated with crop diseases is also discussed. Plant diseases continue to be major challenge to global crop production, especially field crops, inflicting not only crop yield losses to farmers, but also decline quality as well as nutritional value leading threat to global food security. According to FAO statistics, there is a need of 70% steady increase in agricultural production to fulfil the food requirements of 9.1 billion populations by 2050, and annual global crop losses due to pests and diseases have been estimated to be about 30%. Therefore, the book aims at bringing out a comprehensive information on field crop diseases, plant disease detection and diagnosis, monitoring, forecasting/forewarning, and management. The book is very useful for students, teachers, researchers, planners/administrators, and also the end users at national and international level.