Plant Disease

Westcott’s Plant Disease is a reference book on diseases which attack plants. Diseases of plants are found on most all plants including trees, shrubs, grasses, forage, fruits, vegetables, garden and greenhouse plants as well as native wild flowers and even weeds. The Plant Disease Handbook identifies various types of diseases which are known to invade these plants located throughout North and South America.

Plant diseases play an important role on our daily lives. Most of plant diseases are visible and are caused by biotic and/or abiotic factors. Symptoms are usually the results of a morphological change, alteration or damage to plant tissue and/or cells due to an interference of the plant’s metabolism. All basic structures of vascular plants are subject to attack by pathogens.

This book focus on creating popularity and interest in modeling, derivation of equations for plant disease forecasting or construction and use of Web-based Expert Systems among plant pathologists. This book covers descriptions of many historic plant disease epidemics, various forecasting systems and methods of their construction, instruments required for study of plant disease epidemics, widely used commercial forecasting systems and present global scenario of forecasting.

In the human history plant disease epidemics have brought unsurmountable misery many a times. Still breaking out of epidemic in any time in any part of the world is a stark reality. The panic spraying of chemical pesticides is not a panacea. Only the IPM technology may give relief. This technology if backed by the disease forewarning system may yield the desired results. Hence, an in depth understanding of plant disease forecasting system and its successful implementation may bring the global food security.

This title provides a useful background for all students, practitioners, and researchers interested in the field of epidemiology, food security and agriculture sciences.

This book offers a comprehensive guide to the identification, detection, characterization, classification and management of plant pathogens and other beneficial microbes in agriculture. The science of plant pathology is a dynamic field and, given the growing interest in sustainable agricultural practices, plant disease management has also gained importance.

This book is exploring molecular insight of plant disease resistance, enhancing plant immunity as well as the latest omics or approaches in plant disease management. In the recent past, microbial strains or products frequently utilized to inhibit the growth of phytopathogen and disease management. However, it is well known that plants respond to numerous biotic and abiotic stresses by morphological, biochemical, and molecular mechanisms. But still there is much more to study about their molecular aspect of interaction between host- pathogens- biocontrol agents that will be helpful in formulation and applications of microbial antagonistic for effective management of phytopathogens. This book attempt to fill this gap in the literature. This book is of interest to teachers, researchers, agronomist, horticulturalist scientists, capacity builders and policymakers. Also the book serves as additional reading material for undergraduate and graduate students of agriculture, microbiology, environment science.