Editorial

Abstract

Weather and Plant diseases.It has been recognised from the earliest times that weather factors play an important part in the incidence and spread of diseases and pests of plants. Indee,till the discovery of micro organisms.in the middle of the ninteenth century.the occurence of such diseases as blight.mildew etc.was attributed solely to adverse weather conditions.The discvery of pathogenic bacteria and fungi led the scientists of the period to err on the other extreme,and lay too much emphasis on the causal organism.under estimating the influence of weather factors.Inrecent times however.the intimate relation ship that exists between weather and disease is again realised.and increasing attention is being devoted to research on what has been termed as the phenological aspect of plant diseases.and during the last fifteen years,a considerable volume of literature has been gathering round the subject.The conference of Empire Meteorologists,which met in 1929.focussed the attention of both meteorologists.and plant pathologists.on the need for intensive work in this direction,and emphasised the necessity for co-ordinated endeavour in their approach to the problem.In several countries as for example France,Germany and Italy.a system of forecasting diseases and pests has been organised by the Governments with a view to warn the farmers.though is must be admitted.that even in these countries they are yet a long way off in either correctly . forecasting the intensity of the disease.or forestalling it when its incidene is a certainly.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.29321/MAJ.10.002089

Pages

47 - 49

Creative Commons

Copyright

© The Author(s), 2026. Published by Madras Agricultural Students' Union in Madras Agricultural Journal (MAJ). This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited by the user.

Keywords