Importance and Classification of Plant Disease
Importance
Globally, enormous losses of the crops are caused by the plant diseases. The loss can occur from the time of seed sowing in the field to harvesting and storage. Important historical evidences of plant disease epidemics are Irish Famine due to late blight of potato (Ireland, 1845), Bengal famine due to brown spot of rice (India, 1942) and Coffee rust (Sri Lanka, 1967). Such epidemics had left their effect on the economy of the affected countries.
Classification
To facilitate the study of plant diseases they are needed to be grouped in some orderly fashion. Plant diseases can be grouped in various ways based on the symptoms or signs (rust, smut, blight etc.), nature of infection (systemic or localized), habitat of the pathogens, mode of perpetuation and spread (soil-, seed- and air-borne etc.), affected parts of the host (aerial, root disease etc.), types of the plants (cereals, pulses, oilseed, ornamental, vegetable, forest diseases etc.). But the most useful classification has been made based on the type of pathogens that cause plant diseases. Since this type of classification indicates not only the cause of the disease, but also the knowledge and information that suggest the probable development and spread of disease alongwith their possible control measures. The classification is as follows:
1. Infectious plant diseases:
a. Disease caused by parasitic organisms: The organisms included in animate or biotic causes can incite diseases in plants.
b. Diseases caused by viruses and viroids.
2. Non-infectious or non-parasitic or physiological diseases: The factors included in inanimate or abiotic causes can incite such diseases in plants under a set of suitable environmental conditions.
