About the Phytopthora Disease Cycle

Introduction

Phytopthora is infectious disease of kingdom plants. Its common name is destruction of plant as literally. It a genus group of fungi that acts as a prey/pest on plants. The fungal genus is called Oomycetes. These diseases are causing severe damage to plant population as each plant has a specific infective member of the genus, phytopthora. It was first described in 1875. Since then the phytopthora infestations are of huge economical loss to the economy. These are known to result in feminine of the affect plant some of which are an important part of human diet. These are now known as fungi like organism rather than true fungi.

History

Phytopthora is a fungal problem effecting plants on mass scale. Most of the members of phytopthora are of great economy concern. For example, in Ireland (1845-1849) a massive phytopthora infection of potato arises due to which there was potato feminine, which is a major Irish diet. The effects are long known and are yet seen in these crops. Others are of sugar can, soy bean, citrus, and even of trees as shrubs. Even ornamental plants are affected by phytopthora. The control strategy included chemical control but resulted in resistant strains. These conditions made the situation of phytopthora infestation worse. Deforestation is the newly cause which is under research studies. These phytopthora is known to evolve between plants and fungi, because they share characters of the two kingdoms.

Features

These phytopthora species reproduce in both sexual and asexual ways. The weird thing is they show meiosis and diploid chromosomes. The sporangia are the specialized structure that shed the spore that fly away through wind and infects distant plants; hence the whole crop is at risk of phytopthora. Sometimes the flagellated form of infective phytopthora swims via water and reach the host plants. There is infestation of plants, the phytopthora keeps on growing and reproducing via sores causing the whole crop to get the disease. That’s why this is called a disease cycle as once started, it hardtop shut it down.

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