Steven T. Koike, Peter Gladders, Albert O. Paulus, "Vegetable Diseases: A Colour Handbook"
Manson Publishing Ltd | 2006 | ISBN: 1840760753 | 300 pages | PDF | 36,1 MB
IF THERE IS BLIGHT OR MILDEW on one’s crops, what is one to do? The topic of diseases that damage and kill plants is hardly a new subject. For as long as humans have foraged for, grown, traded, or eaten edible plants, disease-causing organisms have been present and exacted their toll on quality, yields, and consumer satisfaction of these commodities. Impacts of plant diseases on the lives of people range from the nuisance of losing a few plants in one’s garden, to significant economic losses to a farmer, and finally to widespread famine due to extensive crop losses in a region. Throughout human history, devastating crop losses have sometimes resulted in subsequent loss of human life and disruptive migrations of the inhabitants. Humanity’s dependence on healthy crops and reliable sources of food, therefore, transcends all barriers of culture, nation, and time. We all need to eat and to feed our children.
Vegetables are an essential and increasingly popular component of human diets today. Collectively, vegetable crops are a major part of agricultural commerce. The vegetable industry produces large volumes of high quality commodities that are intensely marketed and can be delivered locally and regionally or shipped internationally. Consumer standards and market requirements mandate excellent quality produce. The diseases that affect vegetables compromise such quality and therefore are of great importance to grower, shipper, marketer, and consumer. Vegetable production and marketing in the 21st Century has been fashioned by technology and developments that are unique to our times, including molecular biology, globalization of international trade, awareness of the benefits and dangers of synthetic pesticides, and insights into specific health benefits of vegetable foods.
This book is written to address the broad topic of diseases that affect vegetables. Part 1 offers a brief introduction to vegetable crops, descriptions of the disease-causing agents, suggested strategies for identifying and diagnosing vegetable diseases, and general principles in controlling them. In this book we describe diseases that are primarily caused by pathogens (biotic diseases). Problems caused by nutritional and physio logical disorders and environmental and cultural actors (abiotic problems) are mostly not covered.
The rest of the book (Part 2) is divided into chapters on the principal crop groups (and further subdivided if different plants within the group suffer from distinct sets of diseases) and describes the major diseases that affect those vegetables. The diseases are, for the most part, organized first by pathogen type and then by pathogen name. (We should point out that each crop chapter does not include all possible diseases and that the disease list is therefore not exhaustive.) Of special note are chapters devoted to spinach – an increasingly popular vegetable – and to specialty crops and herbs. Each disease entry includes a brief introduction to the disease, detailed description of symptoms, information on the pathogen and disease development, and suggestions on how to manage the problem. For pathogens that affect several crops, full details are presented in only one chapter in order to reduce unnecessary repetition; for other crops that are subject to the same disease, reference will be made to the more complete chapter.
Selected references are included that will allow interested readers to further research the subject. Our collective experience in applied research, extension education, and working closely with farmers and industry members has shaped our approach. Our aim is to increase recognition and diagnosis of vegetable diseases and to provide information on biology and control of the problems. A particular feature of this book are the many high-quality color photographs that illustrate most of these vegetable diseases and which will assist the reader in identifying and understanding them.The glossary at the end lists much of the terminology used in plant pathology and related fields.
In an effort to keep this book timely and reduce the amount of information that rapidly becomes outdated, we have not included specific information on vegetable crop cultivars, pesticide product recommendations, and seed treatments. Such information can change from year to year and also varies greatly between regions, countries, and continents. Seed treatments, in particular, can be implemented in many ways depending upon the practitioner, the nature and location of the seed treatment facility, and so on. For up-to-date and area-appropriate recommendations on vegetable cultivars and disease control chemicals and treatments, consult local extension agents, agricultural consultants, or other professionals who are familiar with the location.
We have written this book with a very broad and diverse audience in mind. We hope this effort will help and be of interest to the following persons: research and extension plant pathologists; diagnosticians and plant lab personnel; teachers of agriculture and related subjects; university students in agriculture and related fields; commercial farmers, vegetable producers, and farm managers; agriculturalists in the fields of seed production, vegetable breeding, agrichemicals, pest control, marketing, and other subjects; government and regulatory persons dealing with agriculture; home gardeners and hobbyists.
