Examines the broad subject of biological control of plant pathogens in a unified framework of concepts and principles. Among the principal themes is the fact that slight changes in an environmental factor often produce striking effects in plant-microbe interactions.
From the Preface:
Our original intention in writing this book was to revise and update our Biological Control of Plant Pathogens. However, it was clear already from the first efforts that we were writing a completely new book and that was the first volume would therefore still be useful to workers in this field. Furthermore, the quantity of new information on biocontrol was so large that to incorporate it into a second edition was almost impossible. Our decision to build on and extend the principles of the first book, rather than to revise it, was strengthened when the American Phytopathological Society (APS) suggested in early 1982 that they reprint our first book which had been out of print for two and a half years. This solved the problem of continued availability of the first book and led to our agreement that APS would also publish the second book as a companion volume.
This book differs from the first in several important respects. The broad subject of biological control of plant pathogens – whether of aerial or subterranean plant parts, whether viroids, viruses, prokaryotes, fungi, or nematodes – is treated in an integrated, unified framework of concepts and principles. Relevant information is included from soil physics on the water and gaseous environment of soil, and from soil microbiology on microbial biomass and biomass turnover in the soil. Mechanisms of biological control are emphasized and related to current concepts of plant physiology, soils, and microbiology. Although some of the aspects covered are outside our expertise, we hope that our perspective as biocontrol specialists may provide useful insights to the experts of these subjects and motivate them to apply these phenomena in biological control. One of the principal themes of this book, only briefly discussed in our early work, is that slight changes in an environmental factor often produce striking effects in interacting among microorganisms, or between them and the crop plant, and provide an effective means of achieving biological control of plant pathogens.
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