ABSTRACT
Arachis hypogaea L. are challenged by various biotic and abiotic stresses that severely limit crop growth and productivity. Among various stresses, disease and pathogen attack as well as water-deficit condition cause serious damage to plants. Therefore, understanding the extent of plant pathogen interaction, water stress imposed at different growth stages, and assessing the mechanisms of disease resistance and drought tolerance in plants are very essential. Growers have adopted various methods such as development of resistant cultivars, biological control, crop rotation, tillage, and chemical pesticides. But a drawback of conventional methods, i.e., resistance breeding is a comparatively less effective, tedious, and unremitting process because the pathogens keep on mutating and generate new races. Moreover, use of chemical pesticides having antibiotic principle at a commercial level is uneconomical, cumbersome, and some are proved to be carcinogenic. As a result, considerable efforts have been made to devise environmentally friendly strategies to protect plants from stress and thus save humans from health hazards. Therefore, this chapter suggests the potential management approaches such as biological control and biotechnological approaches against soilborne disease and water stress of groundnut.
