Fungal diseases have contributed to death and disability in humans, triggered global wildlife extinctions and population declines, devastated agricultural crops, and altered forest ecosystem dynamics. Despite the extensive influence of fungi on health and economic well-being, the threats posed by emerging fungal pathogens to life on Earth are often underappreciated and poorly understood. On December 14 and 15, 2010, the IOM's Forum on Microbial Threats hosted a public workshop to explore the scientific and policy dimensions associated with the causes and consequences of emerging fungal diseases.

This substantially updated edition now in full colour provides key techniques used when working with fungal and fungal-like plant pathogens. As a practical manual it also deals with disease recognition, detection and identification of fungi, plus methods to characterise and curate fungi and handle them under quarantine and quality assurance systems. Fungal Plant Pathogens: Applied Techniques, 2nd edition provides a valuable guide to investigating fungal plant diseases and interpreting laboratory findings for postgraduate and advanced undergraduate students, extension plant pathologists, consultants and advisers in agriculture, forestry and horticulture, and the food supply chain.

This book provides an overview of our current knowledge of some plant-pathogen interactions in economically important crops, emphasizing the importance of pathogenic fungi on fruits, cereals, postharvest crops and the establishment of plant diseases and drawing together fundamental new information on their management strategies based on conventional and eco-friendly methods, with an emphasis on the use of microorganisms and various biotechnological aspects of agriculture, which could lead to sustainability in modern agriculture. The book examines the role of microbes in growth promotion, as bioprotectors and bioremediators, and presents practical strategies for using microbes in sustainable agriculture. In addition, the use of botanicals vis-a-vis chemical pesticides is also reviewed. Contributions on new research fields such as mycorrhizas and endophytes are included. The book also examines in different chapters host-pathogen interactions in the light of the new tools and techniques of molecular biology and genetics.

Fungi research and knowledge grew rapidly following recent advances in genetics and genomics. This book synthesizes new knowledge with existing information to stimulate new scientific questions and propel fungal scientists on to the next stages of research. This book is a comprehensive guide on fungi, environmental sensing, genetics, genomics, interactions with microbes, plants, insects, and humans, technological applications, and natural product development.

Infectious fungal diseases continue to take their toll in terms of human suffering and enormous economic losses. Invasive infections by opportunistic fungal pathogens are a major cause of morbidity and mortality in immuno-compromised individuals. At the same time, plant pathogenic fungi have devastating effects on crop production and human health. New strategies for antifungal control are required to meet the challenges posed by these agents, and such approaches can only be developed through the identification of novel biochemical and molecular targets. However, in contrast to bacterial pathogens, fungi display a wealth of “lifestyles” and modes of infection. This diversity makes it extremely difficult to identify individual, evolutionarily conserved virulence determinants and represents a major stumbling block in the search for common antifungal targets. In order to activate the infection programme, all fungal pathogens must undergo appropriate developmental transitions that involve cellular differentiation and the introduction of a new morphogenetic programme. How growth, cell cycle progression and morphogenesis are co-ordinately regulated during development has been an active area of research in fungal model systems such as budding and fission yeast. By contrast, we have only limited knowledge of how these developmental processes shape fungal pathogenicity, or of the role of the cell cycle and morphogenesis regulators as true virulence factors. This book combines state-of-the-art expertise from diverse pathogen model systems to update our current understanding of the regulation of fungal morphogenesis as a key determinant of pathogenicity in fungi.