Global Scenario of Vegetable Fungal Diseases

Abstract

Plant diseases threaten crop production and are responsible for considerable losses in vegetables worldwide. Every year diseases cause losses up to 40 to 60% in vegetable crops. Vegetable crops are comparatively more susceptible to various types of diseases inflicted by fungi, bacteria, virus, viroid, phytoplasma and nematodes. Genera of fungal pathogens viz. Alternaria, Aschochyta, Colletotrichum, Didymella, Phoma, Phytophthora, Pythium, Rhizoctonia, Sclerotinia and Sclerotium on vegetable crops increased tremendously. Emerging seed-borne and seed-transmitted fungal plant diseases became a major threat for the vegetable seed production system. Emerging diseases in vegetable crops like tomato (early and late blight, Fusarium wilt), chili and peppers (anthracnose, Phytophthora blight), brinjal (phomopsis blight, Alternaria leaf spot), cucurbits (Downey mildew, gummy stem blight, Fusarium wilt, fruit rot, anthracnose and Cercospora leaf spot), okra (Cercospora leaf spot), pea (powdery mildew, fusarium wilt, rust and root rot), French bean (Sclerotinia stem rot), cowpea/dolichos bean (anthracnose, Sclerotinia stem rot), cole crop (black rot, Alternaria blight, downy mildew) etc. The vegetable produce is spoiled by post-harvest pathogens and makes them unfit for human consumption and market due to the production of mycotoxins. Profiling, detection and diagnosis of vegetable pathogens (diseases) are essential for better understanding of pathogens and formulation of safe disease management strategy of vegetable crops. Therefore, there is an urgent need to wide array of diagnoses of pathogens of vegetables and their in-vitro testing towards chemo-sensitivity for formulation of safe management of vegetable diseases.