Bacterial Diseases in Plants

Description

The Bacterial Diseases has been carefully compiled and edited to meet the long felt needs of increasingly large number of those who have to deal with the different aspects of human diseases in colleges, universities and research institutes. It provides a stimulating and important new view of interaction between animals and pathogens causing diseases. Although considered structurally simple, bacteria are extremely diverse from a metabolic standpoint and are found almost everywhere on Earth in vast numbers-from living in jet fuel and on the rims of volcanoes to thriving in hydrothermal vents deep on the ocean floor. Most plant pathogenic bacteria belong to the following genera: Erwinia, Pectobacterium, Pantoea, Agrobacterium, Pseudomonas, Ralstonia, Burkholderia, Acidovorax, Xanthomonas, Clavibacter, Streptomyces, Xylella, Spiroplasma, and Phytoplasma. Plant pathogenic bacteria cause many different kinds of symptoms that include galls and overgrowths, wilts, leaf spots, specks and blights, soft rots, as well as scabs and cankers. In contrast to viruses, which are inside host cells, walled bacteria grow in the spaces between cells and do not invade them. The book is intended to acquaint students of various fields involved directly or indirectly with the major principles of human diseases. The book may be helpful as well to practitioners and those engaged in medical research.