Abstract
Pathogenesis can be viewed as a battle between a plant and a pathogen refereed by the environment. A small change in a single environmental factor can decide the outcome of the plant-pathogen struggle. For example, lines of wheat which carry a gene known as Sr 6 are highly resistant to race 56 of stem rust when grown at 20° C. If the temperature is increased to 25° C, the plants become highly susceptible to the same race of this pathogen (Daly, 1972). Single biological components of the environment can be equally decisive. Damage to tomato plants caused by Sclerotium rolfsii can be greatly reduced by adding a second fungus, Trichoderma harzianum, to the soil. In this case, biological control of the disease has been attributed to the ability of Trichoderma isolates to overgrow and kill S. rolfsii (Wells et al., 1972).
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© 1975 Springer-Verlag Berlin · Heidelberg
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Wheeler, H. (1975). Mechanisms of Pathogenesis. In: Plant Pathogenesis. Advanced Series in Agricultural Sciences, vol 2. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-66184-6_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-66184-6_2
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-66186-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-66184-6
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