BOTA 41036

>< Type/ Status : Compulsory
>< Course title : Plant Pathology
>< Prerequisite(s) : All core course units in Botany and BOTA 32043
>< Objective: At the end of the course student will be able to understand the intricate aspects of plant-pathogen interactions with a view to managing plant diseases.
>< Course content:

Principles of diagnostic techniques in plant diseases: recognizing symptoms, isolation of pathogens and their identification: preliminary identification, biochemical and physiological methods, ultrastructural methods, immunological methods, nucleic acid based methods. Infection and pathogenesis: molecular events during the early recognition process. Constitutive and induced mechanisms of defense in plants and their penetration by pathogens. Determinants of pathogenicity. Implementation of elicitor mediated induced resistance in agriculture. Viral diseases. Post-harvest diseases. Disease epidemics: causes of epidemics, quantitative aspects of disease development: disease growth curve, mathematical description of epidemics, epidemic modeling, compound and simple - interest disease, relevance of epidemiology to disease control. Disease management using biocontrol methods. Soil-borne diseases of tropical crops.

>< Methodology: Lectures, tutorials, seminars and practical assignments and visits to research institutes.
>< Scheme of evaluation: End of course written and practical examination
>< Recommended reading:
01. Fox, R T V (1993). Principles of Diagnostic Techniques in Plant Pathology. CAB International
02. Callow, J A (ed). (1983). Biochemical Plant Pathology. John Wiley and Sons .
03. Stacey, G, M, B and Gresshoff, P M (1996). Biology of Plant-microbe Interactions. International Society for Molecular Plant-Microbe Interaction, USA.
04. Vidhyasekaran, P (1997). Fungal Pathogenesis in Plants and Crops - Molecular Biology and Host Defense Mechanisms. Marcel Dekker Inc.
05. Hillocks, R J and Waller, J M (1997). Soil-borne Diseases of Tropical Crops. CAB International .

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