Scope of Plant Pathology

This power-point presentation related to the importance, objectives & scope of plant pathology. This is a brief guide for the students looking for to choose the Plant Pathology as their field of study. I hope you will like it.

1. Scope of Plant Pathology Presenter Name: Hira Majeed

2. Why Plant Pathology is needed? The crop loss due to diseases is estimated to be approximately 30-50 %. Cultivated plants are often more susceptible to diseases than are their wild relatives. Important environmental factors that may affect development of plant diseases are temperature, relative humidity, soil moisture, soil pH, soil type, and soil fertility. Each pathogen has an optimum temperature for growth. High soil-moisture levels favors development of destructive water mold fungi, such as species of Aphanomyces , Pythium, and Phytophthora . High humidity favors development of the great majority of leaf and fruit diseases caused by fungi and bacteria.

3. Objectives of plant pathology : To study biotic, abiotic and macrobiotic factors of disease & disorders. To study the mechanism of disease development by pathogens. To study the plant-pathogen interaction in relation to environment. To develop methods of management of plant disease.

4. Importance of Plant Pathology: Plant Pathology has advanced techniques to protect crops from losses due to diseases. The science of plant pathology has contributed disease free certified seed production. Most of the diseases with known disease cycle can now be avoided by the modification of cultural practices. With the knowledge of mode of disease spread, many diseases of economic importance can now be checked, minimized or controlled . Crop improvement and varietal resistance have been achieved against many diseases through the joint effort of breeder and plant pathologist . Raising or lowering the levels of certain nutrients also influences the development of some infectious diseases .

5. Plant pathology has made possible to restrict the spread of plant diseases from one place to other through suitable measures and quarantine legislation. With the knowledge of studying about plant diseases, various prophylactic measures are adopted for successful management of diseases like seed treatment, soil treatment and crop rotations. Diseases can be avoided in cold storage by the application of plant pathological measures as per recommendations made for different diseases for protection of fruits and vegetables in storage. Plant pathology has made possible to recognize, discard or utilize toxic substances by producing toxic substances or by competition or by parasitism .

6. Scope of Plant Pathology: Its ultimate goal is to prevent and control plant diseases of economic importance. Responsibilities of the science of plant pathology may be summarized as under: Study of etiology, symptoms, predisposing factors and recurrence of such diseases. Plant pathology deals with different aspects of plant diseases and has wide scope than human pathology which only deals with only one aspect. The branch focuses on understanding how hosts, pathogens, and environments interact to cause plant diseases and on understanding how to control plant diseases.

7. In recent years plant pathologists have begun to specialize in particular aspect. The fields in which notable advances have been made are: Interaction between host and pathogen at chemical, molecular and genetic level. Plant virology, Mycology, chemistry of fungi toxicity. Disease forecasting and Plant Quarantine.

8. Plant Pathology comprises with the basic knowledge and technologies of: Botany Plant Anatomy Plant Physiology Mycology Bacteriology Virology Nematology Genetics

9. Thank You!