How Plants Defend Themselves From Pathogens

[Davidbrown]

Plants represent a rich source of nutrients for many organisms including bacteria, fungi, protists, insects, and vertebrates. Although lacking an immune system comparable to animals, plants have developed a stunning array of structural, chemical, and protein-based defenses designed to detect invading organisms and stop them before they are able to cause extensive damage. Humans depend almost exclusively on plants for food, and plants provide many important non-food products including wood, dyes, textiles, medicines, cosmetics, soaps, rubber, plastics, inks, and industrial chemicals. Understanding how plants defend themselves from pathogens and herbivores is essential in order to protect our food supply and develop highly disease-resistant plant species.

Source: [URL="http://www.apsnet.org/edcenter/intropp/topics/Pages/OverviewOfPlantDiseases.aspx"]http://www.apsnet.org/edcenter/intropp/topics/Pages/OverviewOfPlantDiseases.aspx[/URL]

Plants are highly susceptible to bacterial diseases, and few options are available to control the problem. Know more that <a href="http://bit.ly/improve-immunity-of-tomatoes-plants">how we controlled the plants to improve the immunity of plants</a>

[johnseba]

The majority of phytopathogenic fungi belong to the Ascomycetes and the Basidiomycetes.

The fungi reproduce both sexually and asexually via the production of spores and other structures. Spores may be spread long distances by air or water, or they may be soil borne. Many soil inhabiting fungi are capable of living saprotrophically, carrying out the part of their life cycle in the soil. These are known as facultative saprotrophs.

Fungal diseases may be controlled through the use of fungicides and other agriculture practices, however new races of fungi often evolve that are resistant to various fungicides. Read more at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_pathology

[Davidbrown]

It's very kind of you to provide a details about it. Sparotrophic feeders means any organism, esp a fungus or bacterium, that lives and feeds on dead organic matter.