This power-point presentation related to the importance, objectives & scope of plant pathology. This is a brief guide for the students looking for to choose the Plant Pathology as their field of study. I hope you will like it.

1. Scope of Plant Pathology
Presenter Name: Hira Majeed

2. Why Plant Pathology is needed?
 The crop loss due to diseases is estimated to be approximately 30-50%.
 Cultivated plants are often more susceptible to diseases than are their wild relatives.
 Important environmental factors that may affect development of plant diseases are
temperature, relative humidity, soil moisture, soil pH, soil type, and soil fertility.
 Each pathogen has an optimum temperature for growth. High soil-moisture levels favors
development of destructive water mold fungi, such as species of Aphanomyces, Pythium,
and Phytophthora.
 High humidity favors development of the great majority of leaf and fruit diseases caused
by fungi and bacteria.

3. Objectives of plant pathology:
 To study biotic, abiotic and macrobiotic factors of disease & disorders.
 To study the mechanism of disease development by pathogens.
 To study the plant-pathogen interaction in relation to environment.
 To develop methods of management of plant disease.

4. Importance of Plant Pathology:
 Plant Pathology has advanced techniques to protect crops from losses due to diseases.
 The science of plant pathology has contributed disease free certified seed production.
 Most of the diseases with known disease cycle can now be avoided by the modification of
cultural practices.
 With the knowledge of mode of disease spread, many diseases of economic importance
can now be checked, minimized or controlled.
 Crop improvement and varietal resistance have been achieved against many diseases
through the joint effort of breeder and plant pathologist.
 Raising or lowering the levels of certain nutrients also influences the development of
some infectious diseases.

5.  Plant pathology has made possible to restrict the spread of plant diseases from one place
to other through suitable measures and quarantine legislation.
 With the knowledge of studying about plant diseases, various prophylactic measures are
adopted for successful management of diseases like seed treatment, soil treatment and
crop rotations.
 Diseases can be avoided in cold storage by the application of plant pathological measures
as per recommendations made for different diseases for protection of fruits and vegetables
in storage.
 Plant pathology has made possible to recognize, discard or utilize toxic substances by
producing toxic substances or by competition or by parasitism.

6. Scope of Plant Pathology:
 Its ultimate goal is to prevent and control plant diseases of economic importance.
 Responsibilities of the science of plant pathology may be summarized as under:
 Study of etiology, symptoms, predisposing factors and recurrence of such diseases.
 Plant pathology deals with different aspects of plant diseases and has wide scope than
human pathology which only deals with only one aspect.
 The branch focuses on understanding how hosts, pathogens, and environments interact to
cause plant diseases and on understanding how to control plant diseases.

7.  In recent years plant pathologists have begun to specialize in particular aspect. The fields
in which notable advances have been made are:
 Interaction between host and pathogen at chemical, molecular and genetic level.
 Plant virology, Mycology, chemistry of fungi toxicity.
 Disease forecasting and Plant Quarantine.

8. Plant Pathology comprises with the basic knowledge and technologies of:
 Botany
 Plant Anatomy
 Plant Physiology
 Mycology
 Bacteriology
 Virology
 Nematology
 Genetics

9. Thank You!