Successful defense against an enemy requires perception of his whereabouts. In the last few years, much progress has been made in delineating the plant molecular sentinels that participate in pathogen identification. This ability is encoded by genetically “hard-wired” information, and is called “innate immunity”. It draws its origins from a phylogenetically ancient form of immunity that is comm...

Emerging, re-emerging and endemic plant pathogens continue to challege our ability to safeguard plant health worldwide. Further, globalization, climate change, increased human mobility, and pathogen and vector evolution have combined to increase the spread of invasive plant pathogens. Early and accurate diagnoses and pathogen surveillance on local, regional, and global scales are necessary to p...

Modern communication and sensor technology coupled with powerful pattern recognition algorithms for information extraction and classification allow the development and use of integrated systems to tackle environmental problems. This integration is particularly promising for applications in crop farming, where such systems can help to control growth and improve yields while harmful environmental...

ABSTRACT An analytical model of a pandemic, initiated by a single focus and spreading over a continent, is developed using foci as the smallest units of disease and fields as the smallest units of host. A few generalizing assumptions lead to a parameter-sparse model that may answer general questions on pandemics in a qualitative manner. For pandemic spread of disease during one season, a 'withi...

Pathogenic fungi and bacteria often damage their host (plants) tissues by producing toxic metabolites, which induced various symptoms such as necrosis, chlorosis, wilting, water soaking and eventually the death of plants. These toxic metabolites also known is one of the weapons used by pathogen inducing disease condition in susceptible host plants. Many pathogens are known to produce toxins bot...

The plant Solanum nigrum treated with the pathogen Phytophthora infestans-derived elicitor responded by elevated reactive oxygen species (ROS) production, lipid peroxidation and lipoxygenase (EC 1.13.11.12) activity in comparison with control plants indicating that oxidative stress took place. We demonstrate that these events are accompanied by a significant increase in plastoquinone (PQ) level...

This mini-review summarizes briefly main facts and speculations on roles of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in plant interactions with pathogenic microflora. Examples relating the infection-induced oxidative burst with innate or acquired resistance or susceptibility are provided. Agents triggering ROS production, ROS sources and ROS-involving defense reactions are listed. Special attention has be...

Effective management of insect and mite vectors of plant pathogens is of crucial importance to minimize vector-borne diseases in crops. Pesticides play an important role in managing vector populations by reducing the number of individuals that can acquire and transmit a virus, thereby potentially lowering disease incidence. Certain insecticides exhibit properties other than lethal toxicity that...

Plant diseases are considered an important biotic constraint, which leads to significant crop losses worldwide. Integrated disease management (IDM), which combines biological, cultural, physical and chemical control strategies in a holistic way rather than using a single component strategy proved to be more effective and sustainable. In practice and in the majority of cropping systems today, em...