Role of fungicides in crop health management: Prospects and challenges

Abstract

Fungicides are essential components of crop protection and have played a significant role in managing several devastating crop diseases and realizing optimum crop yields. Their use has assumed importance in the control of more damaging plant pathogens against which host resistance is not easily available or is unstable, such as polycyclic oomycete pathogens. In some cases, the benefit gained through fungicide use is more critical to the extent that certain crops, such as potato, melons, and grapes, to name a few which cannot be cultivated in the absence of disease control that remains heavily dependent on the use of fungicides. About 150 different chemicals belonging to diverse classes are used as fungicides the world over. The need to produce more food per unit area necessitates the rationale behind producing novel fungicides to be developed to protect precious cultivars, which lack genetic disease resistance. This equilibrium between genetic resistance and disease control metabolites of chemical, biochemical, or biological nature will persist and is not likely to alter dramatically in the nearest future.