Research

Maintaining plant health is a fundamental goal of phytomedicine. In particular, it is necessary to ensure an economically and environmentally responsible production of food of sufficient quantity and quality. This places high demands on a purposeful basic and applied research in the entire field of phytomedicine.

Phytomedical research includes biological studies on the occurrence of abiotic and biotic factors, especially plant surveys on the impact of cropping systems on the development of pathogens and pests with special reference to crop protection. For a broad research which considers all possible damaging factors and which focuses on the crop plant and its health, a multidisciplinary, biologically, economically and ecologically oriented development of plant protection measures is required.

Basically it's about to make any necessary corrections in cultivated landscape biocoenoses by i) preserving, reactivating or modifying natural processes with a minimum of external costs and ii) developing a combination of mutually compatible and synergistic measures that can be successfully applied in practice.

Research focus of the Section of Plant Diseases and Protection

• Experiments on the biology and epidemiology of fungal pathogens of winter wheat, winter barley, oilseed rape and sugar beet
• Effect of cropping systems and environmental factors on epidemiology and damage dynamics of fungal pathogens
• Development of biologically and epidemiologically substantiated control tresholds against fungal pathogens in oder to optimize chemical plant protection measures
• Development of prognosis models for fungal pathogens based on biological and meteorological parameters
• Pathophysiological and population genetic analysis of the proximate cause and effect of various host-pathogen interactions
• Development of diagnostic techniques
• Development of application criteria for novel fungicidal active ingredients


The Institute of Phytopathology, CAU