PJB-2018-855
AN OVERVIEW OF THE FUNGICIDES APPLICATION, POPULATION CHANGES, AND THE EMERGENCE OF VIRULENT RACES OF PHYTOPHTHORA INFESTANS
Zahir Muhammad
Abstract
Late blight of potato, tomato and some other important crops in the family Solanaceae which triggered a massive starvation in Ireland during the 1940s, is caused by Phytophthora infestans and serves as a leading biological restraint to the production of potato and tomato. It has been considered as one of the most widely studied, costly and re-emerging diseases of plants. Explicitly, the disease has a tremendous impact on the yield outputs of the potato crop. The atrocities of P. infestans are managed with the extensive use of fungicides; however, fungicides application is also regarded as one of the contributing factors to the emergence of more virulent strains of the pathogen in recent years, besides environmental and ecological concerns. P. infestans has two mating types –A1 and A2 –of which the later one was not much familiar in the world outside of Mexico till the 1980s. The migration of A2 from its center of origin to the rest of the world subsequently replaced the population structure which now comprises more diverse and aggressive races of the pathogen. To address the factors which are responsible for population dynamics of P. infestans, different assumptions have been made. Migrations of the A2 mating type from Mexico to other parts of the world is considered to have promoted sexual reproduction and recombination frequencies which could have consequently lead to the appearance of virulent races of P. infestans. This paper attempts to discuss fungicides application for late blight management and concerned hazards, lading factors linked with population changes and increased virulence of the pathogen.
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