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| Nordic Program in Plant Pathology | |
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Plant
Pathology as the central theme Society faces great challenges in providing food, fibre and energy to an increasing global population under environment hazards and risks to human health. To meet these challenges, efficient and sustainable plant production is needed. Plant diseases have a major impact on yield, quality and safety of the plant products. Some estimates suggest that, on average, roughly a third of the potential yield of crops would be lost to pathogens annually worldwide. Disease management strategies involve cultural practices, application of pesticides, use of resistant cultivars where available, biological control methods, as well as national and international phytosanitary legislation (International Plant Protection Convention, IPPC and the WTO Sanitary and Phytosanitary SPS Agreement). Currently, there is an over-reliance on pesticides, with approximately 320,000 tonnes of active substance used annually in agriculture worldwide; this is predicted to grow 4% over the next 4 years. For the sake of the environment, the development of alternative, non-pesticide-reliant management strategies is urgently needed. We therefore foresee an increasing importance for knowledge in plant pathology due to global trends and changes. The science of plant pathology is the study of all aspects of disease in plants. It includes the causal agents of disease, e.g., fungal pathogens, bacteria and viruses and their structure, function and physiological effects on the host plant. The subject relates to microbial interactions in general, and aspects of human and animal health, such as food and feed safety. Studies of the behaviour of pathogen populations in a plant population are fundamental. Insight into how and why disease epidemics develop will ultimately lead to improved disease management and control. A prerequisite for all disease management is pathogen identification and diagnosis. Management strategies depend on assessment or prediction of injury, and knowledge of pathogen life cycle: survival, propagation, dispersal, infection and pathogenesis. Such knowledge can be used to forecast a disease epidemic and loss of crop yield and quality. With an increasing awareness of the vulnerability of nature and lack of resources, it is both extremely important and a challenge to pursue more sustainable management strategies. The modelling of disease epidemics is an important tool, not only to predict the future progress of an epidemic but also to evaluate the likely benefits of any control strategy. Our understanding of the nature of the interactions of micro-organisms with their hosts and with other micro-organisms has benefited significantly from the rapid development of post genomic and biotechnological methods in plant and microbial sciences. The mechanisms by which plants respond and protect themselves against pathogens, signal transduction pathways, the molecular basis of resistance, genetic regulations, and transgenic and molecular breeding strategies for disease can be experimentally studied and provide new tools and strategies for disease management and provide information useful for all working with both diseases and abiotic stress. Look here for more information |
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