Search Results (9)

Blackleg caused by a hemi-biotrophic fungus Plenodomus lingam (syn. Leptosphaeria maculans) poses a significant threat to global canola production. Changing climatic conditions further exacerbate the intensity and prevalence of blackleg epidemics. Shifts in temperature, humidity, and precipitation patterns can enhance pathogen virulence and disease spread. This review synthesizes the knowledge on integrated disease management (IDM) approaches for blackleg, including crop rotation, resistant cultivars, and chemical and biological controls, with an emphasis on advanced strategies such as disease forecasting models, remote sensing, and climate-adapted breeding. Notably, bibliometric analysis reveals an increasing research focus on the intersection of blackleg, climate change, and sustainable disease management. However, critical research gaps remain, which include the lack of region-specific forecasting models, the limited availability of effective biological control agents, and underexplored socio-economic factors limiting farmer adoption of IDM. Additionally, the review identifies an urgent need for policy support and investment in breeding programs using emerging tools like AI-driven decision support systems, CRISPR/Cas9, and gene stacking to optimize fungicide use and resistance deployment. Overall, this review highlights the importance of coordinated, multidisciplinary efforts, integrating plant pathology, breeding, climate modeling, and socio-economic analysis to develop climate-resilient, locally adapted, and economically viable IDM strategies for sustainable canola production. Full article

A study was conducted in the Guilan Province of Iran, using a variety of Actinomycetes species isolated from the rice fields, with the intention of identifying useful biocontrol agents to lessen rice sheath blight disease. The antagonistic effects against the rice pathogen agent were also assessed both in vitro and in vivo. The antifungal abilities of more than 30 Actinomycetes isolates against the Rhizoctonia solani Kühn (AG1-IA) were used. The biocontrol abilities of the most active isolates were studied in a greenhouse. The size of the inhibition zone against pathogen development and the most potent antagonist Actinomycetes isolates were determined based on the dual culture screening test findings. The ability to create hydrolytic enzymes including amylase, chitinase, protease, and lipase were shown by hydrolytic enzyme assays on the putative antagonists. Antifungal activities of Streptomyces isolates against fungus mycelia were also studied using SEM since, compared to the control grown mycelia and mycelia adjacent to the inhibition zone in the plate, tests revealed an unusual and deformed structure; in our opinion, the chitinase secreted can destroy fungal mycelium. Chloroform test showed that its antifungal effect persists upon exposure to chloroform. All possible isolates belonged to the Streptomyces species, according to the 16S rDNA molecular analysis of the majority of active isolates. Comparing isolates, G had the highest impact in reducing sheath blight disease. The Iranian strain of the Streptomyces has antifungal capabilities, highlighting its potential as a viable biocontrol agent to be used in an Integrated Disease Management (IDM) program to control the rice sheath blight disease. Full article

Date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) is the most important edible fruit crop in Saudi Arabia. Date palm cultivation and productivity are severely affected by various fungal diseases in date palm-producing countries. In recent years, black scorch disease has emerged as a devastating disease affecting date palm cultivation in the Arabian Peninsula. In the current survey, leaves and root samples were collected from deteriorated date palm trees showing variable symptoms of neck bending, leaf drying, tissue necrosis, wilting, and mortality of the entire tree in the Al-Ahsa region of Saudi Arabia. During microscopic examination, the fungus isolates growing on potato dextrose agar (PDA) media produced thick-walled chlamydospores and endoconidia. The morphological characterization confirmed the presence of Thielaviopsis punctulata in the date palm plant samples as the potential agent of black scorch disease. The results were further confirmed by polymerase chain reaction (PCR), sequencing, and phylogenetic dendrograms of partial regions of the ITS, TEF1-α, and β-tubulin genes. The nucleotide sequence comparison showed that the T. punctulata isolates were 99.9–100% identical to each other and to the T. punctulata isolate identified from Iraq-infecting date palm trees. The pathogenicity of the three selected T. punctulata isolates was also confirmed on date palm plants of Khalas cultivar. The morphological, molecular, and pathogenicity results confirmed that T. punctulata causes black scorch disease in symptomatic date palm plants in Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, seven commercially available fungicides were also tested for their potential efficacy to control black scorch disease. The in vitro application of the three fungicides Aliette, Score, and Tachigazole reduced the fungal growth zone by 86–100%, respectively, whereas the in vivo studies determined that the fungicides Aliette and Score significantly impeded the mycelial progression of T. punctulata with 40% and 73% efficiency, respectively. These fungicides can be used in integrated disease management (IDM) strategies to curb black scorch disease. Full article

Bud rot is a limiting disease that affects most oil palm crops destroying thousands of hectares in Latin America. Bud rot (BR) is caused by the oomycete Phytophthora palmivora (Butler). Integrated disease management (IDM) technology has been used to control the disease, which slows down the progress of the disease, allowing palm recovery. However, the effect of this technology on the recovery speed of treated palms is not well known. We studied the time taken for palm recovery from BR under the integrated management approach. The study was carried out on 21 oil palm commercial cultivars dura × pisifera (D × P) and O × G hybrids affected by BR in the Colombian oil palm Central Zone. The analysis included different recovery times (RT), the severity degree, time of the year (wet or dry season), number of reinfections, and cultivar. The RT of bud rot-affected palms ranges from 103 to 315 days, with an average of 202.8 days when an IDM is used. RT was lower than that reported in the diseased palms without IDM (540 days). According to the severity degree, the RT lasted 202 days for severity degree 1, 198 days for severity degree 2, and 222 with severity degree 3 and 4. In comparison, there was no significant difference between dry and rainy seasons in RT. Differences between cultivars were found; however, under IDM, all cultivars showed low RT. The IDM has a positive impact in reducing the RT to BR. Low RT has indirect effects minimizing potential yield losses, improving the number of successfully recovered palms, and reducing the risk of disease dissemination. Full article

Crop disease is widely considered as one of the most pressing challenges for food crops, and therefore an accurate crop disease detection algorithm is highly desirable for its sustainable management. The recent use of remote sensing and deep learning is drawing increasing research interests in wheat yellow rust disease detection. However, current solutions on yellow rust detection are generally addressed by RGB images and the basic semantic segmentation algorithms (e.g., UNet), which do not consider the irregular and blurred boundary problems of yellow rust area therein, restricting the disease segmentation performance. Therefore, this work aims to develop an automatic yellow rust disease detection algorithm to cope with these boundary problems. An improved algorithm entitled Ir-UNet by embedding irregular encoder module (IEM), irregular decoder module (IDM) and content-aware channel re-weight module (CCRM) is proposed and compared against the basic UNet while with various input features. The recently collected dataset by DJI M100 UAV equipped with RedEdge multispectral camera is used to evaluate the algorithm performance. Comparative results show that the Ir-UNet with five raw bands outperforms the basic UNet, achieving the highest overall accuracy (OA) score (97.13%) among various inputs. Moreover, the use of three selected bands, Red-NIR-RE, in the proposed Ir-UNet can obtain a comparable result (OA: 96.83%) while with fewer spectral bands and less computation load. It is anticipated that this study by seamlessly integrating the Ir-UNet network and UAV multispectral images can pave the way for automated yellow rust detection at farmland scales. Full article

Humulus lupulus L. is a long-lived, perennial, herbaceous, and dioecious climbing plant. The foremost producers in the European Union are Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovenia, and Spain. The Spanish cultivated area is concentrated in the province of León. Powdery mildew, caused by Podosphaera macularis, menaces hop production and quality in all hop growing regions located in the Northern hemisphere, colonizing leaves, petioles, inflorescences, and finally cones. In this work, powdery mildew control was monitored, comparing nine fungicide strategies: five organics, two integrated disease management (IDM)-based, with and without Nutragreen^® nanoscale carrier, and two conventional treatments (CON) with and without Nutragreen^® nanoscale carrier. The organic treatments were able to diminish P. macularis on leaves, but no effect was observed in cones. CON treatments reduced the infection on leaves and cones and increased the cone quantity and quality. Likewise, IDM-based treatments provided satisfactory results as they diminished powdery mildew on leaves and cones. Finally, dose reduction using a Nutragreen^® nanoscale carrier showed beneficial effects in the control of powdery mildew compared to the commercial dose. Hence, the use of nanoscale carries permits a 30% reduction in pesticide dose, which optimizes yield and hop quality, reduces risks linked to pesticides, and aids in compliance with public and international policy demands. Full article

Mycoparasites cause heavy losses in commercial mushroom farms worldwide. The negative impact of fungal diseases such as dry bubble (Lecanicillium fungicola), cobweb (Cladobotryum spp.), wet bubble (Mycogone perniciosa), and green mold (Trichoderma spp.) constrains yield and harvest quality while reducing the cropping surface or damaging basidiomes. Currently, in order to fight fungal diseases, preventive measurements consist of applying intensive cleaning during cropping and by the end of the crop cycle, together with the application of selective active substances with proved fungicidal action. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the redundant application of the same fungicides has been conducted to the occurrence of resistant strains, hence, reviewing reported evidence of resistance occurrence and introducing unconventional treatments is worthy to pave the way towards the design of integrated disease management (IDM) programs. This work reviews aspects concerning chemical control, reduced sensitivity to fungicides, and additional control methods, including genomic resources for data mining, to cope with mycoparasites in the mushroom industry. Full article

Stemphylium blight (SB) caused by Ascomycete, Stemphylium botryosum Wallr. has been a serious threat to lentil cultivation, mainly in Bangladesh, Nepal, India, and Canada since its first outbreak in Bangladesh in 1986. The genus Stemphylium Wallr., a dematiaceous hyphomycete, comprises up to 150 species, and is pathogenic on a wide range of plants infecting leguminous as well as nonleguminous crops. In recent years, studies indicated overlapping in morphological characters among the different species under the genus Stemphylium, making the identification and description of species difficult. This necessitates different molecular phylogenetic analysis in species delimitation. Therefore, a detailed understanding of spatial diversity and population structure of the pathogen is pertinent for producing source material for resistance breeding. The role of different weather variables as predisposing factors for the rapid spread of the pathogen necessitates devising a disease predictive model for the judicial application of fungicides. A dearth of information regarding spore biology, epidemiology, race diversity, host-pathogen interaction, and holistic disease management approach necessitates immediate attention towards more intensive research efforts. This is the first comprehensive review on the current state of knowledge and research efforts being made for a better understanding of the SB resistance through cognizing biology, ecology, and epidemiology of S. botryosum and effective disease management strategies to prevent widespread outbreaks of SB. The information regarding the biology and epidemiology of S. botryosum is also crucial for strengthening the “Integrated Disease Management” (IDM) programme. The need for a regional research network is advocated where the disease is becoming endemic. Full article

According to their origin, major postharvest losses of citrus fruit are caused by weight loss, fungal diseases, physiological disorders, and quarantine pests. Cold storage and postharvest treatments with conventional chemical fungicides, synthetic waxes, or combinations of them are commonly used to minimize postharvest losses. However, the repeated application of these treatments has led to important problems such as health and environmental issues associated with fungicide residues or waxes containing ammoniacal compounds, or the proliferation of resistant pathogenic fungal strains. There is, therefore, an increasing need to find non-polluting alternatives to be used as part of integrated disease management (IDM) programs for preservation of fresh citrus fruit. Among them, the development of novel natural edible films and coatings with antimicrobial properties is a technological challenge for the industry and a very active research field worldwide. Chitosan and other edible coatings formulated by adding antifungal agents to composite emulsions based on polysaccharides or proteins and lipids are reviewed in this article. The most important antifungal ingredients are selected for their ability to control major citrus postharvest diseases like green and blue molds, caused by Penicillium digitatum and Penicillium italicum, respectively, and include low-toxicity or natural chemicals such as food additives, generally recognized as safe (GRAS) compounds, plant extracts, or essential oils, and biological control agents such as some antagonistic strains of yeasts or bacteria. Full article