Diseases, Distribution, Epidemiology, and Control

Book excerpt: The Cereal Rusts, Volume II: Diseases, Distribution, Epidemiology, and Control is a compendium of papers that aims to control cereal rusts through principles about the nature of the disease, as well as learned strategies toward its control. These papers deal with the major cereal rust diseases such as wheat and rye stem rust, wheat leaf rust, stripe rust, oat stem rust, barley leaf rust. Control of these types of rust diseases include cultural methods, barberry eradication, crop resistance, fungicides, and ecological controls. One paper notes that cultivars, a plant variety developed through selective breeding, should be used. The key to its development with long-lasting resistance is diversity, namely, genetic diversity in resistance types, and diversity in its strategic development, including a combination of race-specific with non-race specific resistance. For example, Parlevliet has pointed out that in natural ecosystems, race-specific resistance can protect the host plant by rendering the pathogen population less aggressive. One paper also examines the use of chemicals for rust disease control in the United States. This compendium is ideally suited for the cytologists, physiologists, biochemists, geneticists, epidemiologists, taxonomists, and cereal plant pathologists.