Soil Borne Ornamental Plant Pathogens

Description

All gardens have a range of permanent soil-borne disease organisms which are usually contained in a balanced environment where organisms, soil conditions, and hosts interact in a complex system. Garden plants only show symptoms of disease when this balance is disrupted and pathogen organisms become dominant. They comprise damping-off of seedlings and vascular and root rot diseases, and the causal agents include fungi, oomycetes, some bacteria, nematodes, viruses (carried by different vectors) and parasitic weeds. Although very dissimilar, they share a common character related to close association with the soil, which plays in turn a direct influence on their survival and ability to cause disease, impacting also on agronomic practices to manage the soil environment. Moreover, soil borne pathogens are able to colonize tissues of non-host plants and have different modes for their spatial and temporal spreading. This book “Soil Borne Ornamental Plant Pathogens” describes diseases in ornamental plants in an elaborative manner. This book is highly useful for students and floriculturists to understand major disease that can be spread in soil.