Exploiting Phytochemicals for Developing Sustainable Crop Protection Strategies to Withstand Climate Change: Example from Africa

2014 ◽  
pp. 35-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zeyaur R. Khan ◽  
Charles A. O. Midega ◽  
Jimmy O. Pittchar ◽  
John A. Pickett
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Crop Protection ◽  
Sustainable Crop Protection ◽  
Protection Strategies

Harnessing chemical ecology for environment-friendly crop protection

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seogchan Kang ◽  
Rhea Lumactud ◽  
Ningxiao Li ◽  
Terrence H Bell ◽  
HyeSeon Kim ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Disease Control ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Crop Protection ◽  
Bioactive Metabolites ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Environment Friendly ◽  
Protection Strategies ◽  
Health Related ◽  
Microbe Interactions ◽  
Synthetic Pesticides

Heavy reliance on synthetic pesticides for crop protection becomes increasingly unsustainable, calling for robust alternative strategies that do not degrade the environment and vital ecosystem services. There exist numerous reports of successful disease control using various microbes in small-scale trials. However, their inconsistent efficacy has hampered large-scale applications. An enhanced understanding of how beneficial microbes interact with plants, other microbes, and the environment and which factors affect their efficacy of disease control is crucial to deploy microbial allies as effective and reliable pesticide alternatives. Diverse metabolites produced by plants and microbes participate in pathogenesis and defense, regulate the growth and development of themselves and neighboring organisms, help maintain cellular homeostasis under varied environmental conditions, and affect the assembly and activity of plant and soil microbiomes. However, research on the metabolites associated with plant growth/health-related processes, except antibiotics, has not received adequate attention. This review highlights several classes of metabolites known or suspected to affect plant health, focusing on those associated with biocontrol and belowground plant-microbe and microbe-microbe interactions. The review also presents how new insights anticipated from systematically exploring the diversity and mechanism of action of bioactive metabolites can be harnessed to develop novel crop protection strategies.

Rational strategies for the control of queleas and other migrant bird pests in Africa

1979 ◽  
Vol 287 (1022) ◽  
pp. 289-300 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Crop Protection ◽  
Biological Research ◽  
Natural Food ◽  
Pest Species ◽  
Migration Routes ◽  
Wet Season ◽  
Control Effort ◽  
Protection Strategies ◽  
Major Pest ◽  
Migrant Bird

The red-billed quelea, Quelea quelea , a major pest of cereal crops in Africa, has been ‘controlled’ in many countries for over 20 years. Yet its numbers do not appear to have altered significantly in consequence. Low rainfall, which adversely affects the supply of the birds’ natural food (wild grass seeds), can be held responsible for the temporary decline in numbers in South Africa between 1955 and 1963, and for the currently reduced population in the Sahel states. Attempts to make the population reduction strategy effective by increasing the control effort are likely to be unsuccessful and costly. Instead, other crop protection strategies should be selected, each appropriate to particular damage situations. Where damage is caused to irrigated crops in the dry season, or to wet season crops grown along the birds’ migration routes, an alteration of crop phenology strategy is appropriate. But where damage is caused by newly independent young, the destruction of nearby breeding colonies is required. Such destruction should aim to give local and temporary relief and not attempt overall regulation of the pest’s population. Neither scaring techniques (including chemical repellents), nor so-called birdproof varieties, offer much hope, since damage is largely caused by birds which have no alternative, natural, food source at the time. Other bird pest species require substantial biological research before logical decisions on strategy can be made.

scholarly journals Integrating Experience, Evidence and Expertise in the Crop Protection Decision Process

Plant Disease ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 99 (9) ◽  
pp. 1197-1203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gareth Hughes ◽  
Fiona J. Burnett
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Decision Process ◽  
Disease Risk ◽  
Crop Protection ◽  
Initial Assessment ◽  
Shared Decision ◽  
Clinical Literature ◽  
Sustainable Crop Protection ◽  
Farm Scale ◽  
Current Risk

Generically, farm-scale crop protection decision making may be characterized as a process beginning with an initial assessment of disease risk followed by the accumulation of evidence related to current risk factors, leading to a risk prediction. What action is then taken depends on the response of the decision owner, taking into account previous experience, advice from trusted sources, alongside policy or legislative constraints on crop protection practice that are intended to mitigate any impacts that may transcend the farm scale. This process has commonalities with decision-making in the strategy of preventive medicine. This article delves into the clinical literature in order to provide a perspective on some recent discussions of shared decision making presented there, discussions that relate to issues also faced in sustainable crop protection.

scholarly journals Sporangium-Specific Gene Expression in the Oomycete Phytopathogen Phytophthora infestans

2003 ◽  
Vol 2 (6) ◽  
pp. 1376-1385 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyoung Su Kim ◽  
Howard S. Judelson
Keyword(s):  
Phytophthora Infestans ◽  
Plant Pathogens ◽  
Crop Protection ◽  
Sorbitol Dehydrogenase ◽  
Metabolic Enzyme ◽  
Specific Gene ◽  
Cellular Processes ◽  
Protection Strategies ◽  
Cdna Macroarrays ◽  
Late Blight Pathogen

ABSTRACT The oomycete genus Phytophthora includes many of the world's most destructive plant pathogens, which are generally disseminated by asexual sporangia. To identify factors relevant to the biology of these propagules, genes induced in sporangia of the potato late blight pathogen Phytophthora infestans were isolated using cDNA macroarrays. Of ∼1,900 genes known to be expressed in sporangia, 61 were up-regulated >5-fold in sporangia versus hyphae based on the arrays, including 17 that were induced> 100-fold. A subset were also activated by starvation and in a nonsporulating mutant. mRNAs of some genes declined in abundance after germination, while others persisted through the germinated zoospore cyst stage. Functions were predicted for about three-quarters of the genes, including potential regulators (protein kinases and phosphatases, transcription factors, and G-protein subunits), transporters, and metabolic enzymes. Predominant among the last were several dehydrogenases, especially a highly expressed sorbitol dehydrogenase that accounted for 3% of the mRNA. Sorbitol dehydrogenase activity also rose during sporulation and several stress treatments, paralleling the expression of the gene. Another interesting metabolic enzyme resembled creatine kinases, which previously were reported only in animals and trypanosomes. These results provide insight into the transcriptional and cellular processes occurring in sporangia and identify potential targets for crop protection strategies.

scholarly journals Proteomics of Plant Pathogenic Fungi

2010 ◽  
Vol 2010 ◽  
pp. 1-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raquel González-Fernández ◽  
Elena Prats ◽  
Jesús V. Jorrín-Novo
Keyword(s):  
Virulence Factors ◽  
Cell Biology ◽  
Crop Protection ◽  
Pathogenic Fungi ◽  
Disease Diagnosis ◽  
Plant Pathogenic Fungi ◽  
Proteomics Analysis ◽  
Protection Strategies ◽  
Crop Disease ◽  
Opening Up

Plant pathogenic fungi cause important yield losses in crops. In order to develop efficient and environmental friendly crop protection strategies, molecular studies of the fungal biological cycle, virulence factors, and interaction with its host are necessary. For that reason, several approaches have been performed using both classical genetic, cell biology, and biochemistry and the modern, holistic, and high-throughput, omic techniques. This work briefly overviews the tools available for studying Plant Pathogenic Fungi and is amply focused on MS-based Proteomics analysis, based on original papers published up to December 2009. At a methodological level, different steps in a proteomic workflow experiment are discussed. Separate sections are devoted to fungal descriptive (intracellular, subcellular, extracellular) and differential expression proteomics and interactomics. From the work published we can conclude that Proteomics, in combination with other techniques, constitutes a powerful tool for providing important information about pathogenicity and virulence factors, thus opening up new possibilities for crop disease diagnosis and crop protection.

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