Horticultural Crop Diseases

Catalog description

The concepts of plant pathology are introduced to describe how plants, the environment, and biotic and abiotic plant pathogens interact over time to cause disease. Understanding these relationships can help to prevent disease problems or increase management and control options. Students learn how plant pathogens survive, reproduce, and spread. The role that plant pathogen distribution and regulation have played in shaping history and their influence on our economics, trade, and the environment is discussed. Common and significant plant diseases are illustrated to explain their causes, diagnosis, management, and national and international importance. All information is presented in online modules and all assessments are submitted online. Students should be able to recognize common garden plants in the NE United States such as maples, oaks, roses, crabapples, lilacs, peony, pachysandra, etc. Internet access and a digital camera are required (phone cameras are usually fine). Weekly assignments, quizzes, and labs are all submitted online. Several diagnosis exercises reinforce the practical aspects of identifying and controlling plant pathogens and the Plant Disease Assessment Report provides experience in plant disease site evaluation and management. Students customize many assignments to use their favorite plant materials and locations. The online modules supply course content but students apply the lessons in their own local area. Original student photographs are needed for diagnoses and the Plant Disease Assessment Report. Plant diseases have significant influences on plant aesthetics, economics, edibility, and viability. They have had profound influences on world history, and roles in modern national and international trade and bio-security. Students will gain an appreciation of the impact that horticultural crop diseases can have on society and the environment, including how the global trade of horticultural crops has resulted in the spread of pathogens important to agricultural crops and native plants.