Diversification of crops to control the dispersal of fungal disease
Diseases spread among the plantation of crops or monoculture becomes a serious issue globally. Fungicides are normally used in control fungus disease dispersion in monoculture. However, the fungicide used to against fungus in monoculture is becoming less effective as a result of resistance builds up in the fungus that survives (Vincelli, n.d.). Moreover, fungicide unfriendly properties toward the environment have reduced the use of the antimicrobial agent in the farm or estate. In order to prevent the fungus disease spreads among the crops, in the sense that no fungicides should be used, the re-diversification of monoculture lines in the land that once modified to create monoculture land is thought to be a possible solution (Sapoukhina et al. 2010). Diversification of crops enables the yield of the multiple cropssustainedin a considerable level, where pathogens that will infect wide range of crop plantations are rarely to be exist. Yield losses caused by the pathogen are limited and the durability of varietal resistance increases due to the re-diversification of crops in the land (Finckh& Wolfe, as cited in Sapoukhina et al., 2010). A disease that affects one crops plantation may not susceptible in other plantation. This makes the economic loss is minimized to the lowest when facing a specific disease against certain crops. According to Manthey&Fehrmann (as cited in Sapoukhina et al., 2010), cultivar mixtures are more profitable than pure stands of the constituent cultivars.
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References
Sapoukhina, Natalia, Yuri Tyutyunov, Ivan Sache, and Roger Arditi. 2010. “Spatially Mixed Crops to Control the Stratified Dispersal of Airborne Fungal Diseases.” Ecological Modelling 221 (23): 2793–2800. doi:10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2010.08.020. Vincelli, Paul. n.d. “Some Principles of Fungicide Resistance 1,” no. January 2014. http://www2.ca.uky.edu/agcollege/plantpathology/ext_files/PPFShtml/PPFS-MISC-2.pdf. |
By: Kong Kah Kee