ABSTRACT
Plant pathologists operate within a highly developed infrastructure to manage disease in the planting material, the growing crop, and in the harvested produce. There are professional societies and journals that publish descriptions of new diseases and of new methods of pathogen identication and disease control. National and international legislation exists to prevent pathogen spread and to ensure that methodology is standardized. The principle approach to disease management in crops is to plant “disease-free” material and to delay the entry of the pathogen into the crop by spraying with pesticides, etc. Fortunately, true seed is generally free of pathogens; however, for vegetatively propagated crops, there is a high risk of transmission of disease from the parent plant to the vegetative propagules, and so stock-plant health certication schemes have been established to provide healthy planting material for growers. The latter schemes are based on international guidelines for pathogen testing and pathogen elimination.
