Soil-borne diseases result from a reduction of biodiversity of soil organisms. Restoring beneficial organisms that attack, repel, or otherwise antagonize disease-causing pathogens will render a soil disease-suppressive. Plants growing in diseases-suppressive soil resist diseases much better than in soils low in biological diversity. Beneficial organisms can be added directly, or the soil environment can be made more favourable for them through use of compost and other organic amendments. Compost quality determines its effectiveness at suppressing soil-borne plant diseases. This book describes the characteristics of various soil-borne diseases of plants and the measures to prevent them. It provides a detailed description of the life of the pathogens, chemical and pesticidal means of regulation, taxonomic changes have been made in bacteria, fungi, nematodes and viruses; changing patterns of diseases and many recently reported diseases. This book should be useful to gardeners, landscape architects, florists, nurserymen, seed and fungicide dealers, pesticide applicators, cooperative extension agents and plant pathologists. It should also be a useful reference book for plant pathology classrooms and in some cases used as a textbook.
