Practical Manual for Plant Disease Assessment

Description

Being plant pathologist, if we set down the behind philosophy and importance to write this practical manual in detail, then this preface would be too long. Hence, it would be suffice to say that the need to write this manual relates to a course, which is taught to beginners of the science of plant pathology. Therefore, this has attempted to provide them concise information in a well practical way. Because accuracy in plant disease assessment is the pillar of integrated disease management. An assessment in a precise way represents a quantitative link between theory and practice of disease management. If someone wants to develop a predictive model in a meaningful way, then disease intensity must be quantified with a high degree of accuracy.

Any course is a reflection of teachers’ specialty, interest and their trainings. Moreover, our interest in mycology (Study of fungal pathogens, their taxonomy and interaction with plants) owes to the training we received in PhD at University of Agriculture Faisalabad, Pakistan and in fellowship as visiting scholar at University of California Davis, USA.

As the title of this manual depicts, it deals with plant disease assessment approaches. In this manual, a broad topic of study, “Plant diseases assessment” has tried to break down into four striking units. Its first Unit deals with the concepts of terminologies generally use to describe disease damage in plants. While Unit 2 cast light on the field survey for plant disease assessment. Unit 3 gives a comprehensive picture of approaches to visual estimation for assessing plant diseases. However, its last unit delineates remote sensing procedures for assessing diseases in plants. Here, we squeeze this preface with a statement that this manual gives a beautiful shift from classical to modern approaches to explain plant disease assessment.