Coffee plant diseases affected by nutritional balance

Abstract

In recent years, ambiental sustainability has become a priority in agricultural production programs throughout Brazilian territory due to the need to ensure food security and environmental quality. Diseases continue to be a factor limiting sustainable agricultural production, due to the great need for chemical defenses for their control. Thus, it is indispensable to make use of alternative management techniques to reduce the use of such chemical defenses and to increase resistance of plants to diseases. It is known that nutritional balance affect plant resistance to diseases, and effective physical and biochemical response of plants to pathogens is determined by adequate concentrations of mineral elements in the plant tissues. This review presents the most recent information related to the mode of action of the nutrients in the host-pathogen interaction and individual action in the control of plant diseases with the use of essential nutrients, as well as other elements considered beneficial, such as silicon. It also reports on the use of some of these mineral nutrients in control of the main diseases of the coffee plant that occur in Brazil, especially rust, cercosporiosis, phoma leaf spot, and bacterial blight. In addition, contradictory results are found in the literature on the use of mineral nutrients in control of different diseases, including coffee diseases.