New and Re-emerging Plant Diseases and Pathogens

Dear Colleagues,

Due to the significant threat of new and re-emerging plant diseases and pathogens, the United Nations declared 2020 the International Year of Plant Health. New and re-emerging plant diseases threaten global ecosystems, health, food security, and economy, which are particularly vulnerable due to geographic expansion, climate change, modified land use, and the increased use of agrochemical including insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, and nematicides in agricultural practices. Novel and emerging plant disease can be caused by a broad range of organisms that include fungi, bacteria, bacteria, viruses, and phytoplasmas, and it produces occasionally important crop losses of global economic importance. Recent research and developments such as the use of molecular biology have led to improved technologies for faster and better detection of pathogens. Conventional epidemiology has changed and now includes molecular factors, ecology, and evolution as new challenges for plant pathology research. Consumer demands for healthier food and sustainability of food production have made many farmers switch to integrated disease management strategies. On the other hand, global climate changes and increased traffic of people and goods are leading to the emergence of new diseases, or the re-emergence of diseases from the past, putting modern agriculture in a constantly alert situation.

In this Special Issue, articles (original research papers, perspectives, hypotheses, opinions, reviews, and modeling approaches and methods) that focus on emerging plant disease and pathogens at all levels, including new pathogen species and strains, new detection and diagnosis methods, spatiotemporal spread dynamics, molecular epidemiology, dynamic disease networks, and risk predictive models, as well as the role of geography, weather, climate change, and ecosystems in general in the development of new and re-emerging plant diseases of field and greenhouse crops, trees, native species, and aquatic plants, in addition to the control strategies of these plant diseases, are most welcome.

Dr. Dirk Janssen
Dr. Yasser Sobhy Ahmed Nehela
Guest Editors

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