Evidence-based phytoiatry, a new approach in crop protection

Abstract

In the past decades, the scientific quality of biomedical studies has been hierarchically depicted in the well-known pyramid of evidence-based medicine (EBM), with higher and higher levels of evidence moving from the base to the top. Such an approach is missing in the modern crop protection and, therefore, we introduce, for the first time, this novel concept of evidence-based phytoiatry in this field. This editorial is not a guideline on plant protection products (PPP) registration, but rather a scientific and technical support for researchers involved in the general area of plant pathology, providing them with evidence-based information useful to design critically new studies.