ABSTRACT
This chapter provides information on diseases of tobacco, their symptoms, pathogen characters, epidemiology, and management. The diseases covered are damping-off, black shank, frog eye spot, powdery mildew, brown spot, anthracnose, wild fire, mosaic, leaf curl, broom rape. the fungus produces thick, hyaline, thin walled, and non-septate mycelium. It produces irregularly lobed sporangia which germinate to produce vesicle containing zoopores. The zoospores are kidney shaped and biflagellate. The pathogen survives in the soil as oospores and chlamydospores. The primary infection is from the soil-borne fungal spores and secondary spread through sporangia and zoospores transmitted by wind and irrigation water. The fungus produces hyaline and non-septate mycelium. The sporangia, which are hyaline, thin walled, ovate or pyriform with papillae, develop on the sporangiophores in a sympodial fashion. The fungus lives as a saprophyte on organic wastes and infected crop residues in soil.
