Agriculture is one of the most fundamental human activities. As the farming capacity has expanded, the usage of resources such as land, fertilizer, and water has grown exponentially, and environmental pressures from modern farming techniques have stressed natural landscapes. Still, by some estimates, worldwide food production needs to increase to keep up with global food demand. Machine Learning and the Internet of Things can play a promising role in the Agricultural industry, and help to increase food production while respecting the environment. This book explains how these technologies can be applied, offering many case studies developed in the research world.

This book is a compilation of the most challenging and significant chapters on the diagnosis and management of important bacterial, fungal, viral, viroid, phytoplasma, non parasitic diseases and various physiological disorders, in various crops. The chapters have been contributed by eminent plant pathologists, having wide experience of teaching and research on various crops with different types of diseases, which cause great economic losses. The book would be very useful for students, teachers and researchers of plant pathology. This book highlights recent advances made in the development of new types of resistance in host plants and alternative strategies for managing plant diseases to improve food quality and reduce the negative public health impact associated with plant diseases. Having entered into 21st century advancements in the Diagnosis of Plant Pathogens and Plant Disease Management need to be closely examined and adequately applied, so that newer challenges facing plant pathology could be adequately addressed in attaining food security for the growing population. Substantial advancements have been made in terms of expanding knowledge base of the biology of plant-microbial interactions, disease management strategies and application and practice of Plant Pathology. Application of molecular biology in Plant Pathology has greatly improved our ability to detect plant pathogens and in increasing our understanding, their ecology and epidemiology. Similarly, new technologies and resources have been evolved for the development of sustainable crop protection systems by different control strategies against various pests and pathogens that are important components of the integrated pest management programme. Natural products and chemical compounds discovered as a result of basic research and molecular mechanisms of pathogenesis have led to the development of “biorational” pesticides. Biological control has been found to be the most significant approach to plant health management during the twentieth century and promises using modern biotechnology, to be even more significant in the twenty-first century.

Plant diseases play an important role on our daily lives. Most of plant diseases are visible and are caused by biotic and/or abiotic factors. Symptoms are usually the results of a morphological change, alteration or damage to plant tissue and/or cells due to an interference of the plant’s metabolism. All basic structures of vascular plants are subject to attack by pathogens. The failure in accurate disease diagnosis and management may lead to huge losses in plant production and related commodities, which causes nutritional food scarcity. Typically, the appearance of a biotic symptom will indicate the relatively late stage of an infection and/or colonization of a pathogen. Expert detection, accurate diagnosis, and timely management play a significant role in keeping plants free from pathogens. In this book expert scholars share their research knowledge and key literature which are vital toward the diagnosis of plant diseases across the globe, addressing traditional plant pathology techniques, as well as advanced molecular diagnostic approach.

Plant pathogens, the causal agent of infectious plant diseases, influence our lives more than just as an economic impact through yield lost. The study of plant pathogens has given rise to the development of new sciences, new technologies for plant breeding, and the agrochemical industry for pesticide developments. Yet, all our actions and efforts to suppress or eradicate them constantly pressures these various organisms to evolve and adapt for survival. Therefore today, when facing climate changes, accelerated transport of plants and plant products, and world population growth, we have to ask quo vadis phytopathology. Like Alice in Wonderland “If we wish to go anywhere we must run twice as fast as that” so we need to constantly broaden our knowledge. However, today’s literature abounds with knowledge about plant pathogens. Hence, this book intends to present to the reader all the latest material and knowledge about plant pathogens, changes or refinements in plant disease epidemiology, and new approaches and materials used for plant pathogen control. Hopefully, this book will be of interest to those working within the field and looking for an up-to-date introduction. We hope it also interests students and thereby, will influence the future development of phytopathology and our better coexistence with plant pathogens.

Food Security and Plant Disease Management offers a comprehensive exploration of biocontrol, the latest technologies being used in plant health assurance, and resulting impacts on crop production and food security. Discussing both theoretical and practical topics, the book examines basic and advanced applications of biosensor and nano-technologies, introduces plant disease, including modes of action and their transmission in host plants, then covers factors contributing to plant disease and various means of addressing those diseases. This volume is part of the Microorganisms in Agriculture and the Environment series and provides important information for developing new effective plant protection practices. The direct or indirect applications of beneficial microbes in the treatment of plant disease is termed "microbial control and these methods have increasingly been identified as important options for plant health management. The beneficial microbes as well as recent omic and nano-technologies also reveal important mechanisms that can be utilized in disease management strategies. - Explores the impact of climate change on plant diseases and new methods of resolution - Includes information on gene expression during crop disease management - Presents insights into the legal and commercial aspects of microbial control

Despite the increasing population (the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates 70% more food will be needed in 2050 than was produced in 2006), issues related to food production have yet to be completely addressed. In recent years, Internet of Things technology has begun to be used to address different industrial and technical challenges to meet this growing need. These Agro-IoT tools boost productivity and minimize the pitfalls of traditional farming, which is the backbone of the world's economy. Aided by the IoT, continuous monitoring of fields provides useful and critical information to farmers, ushering in a new era in farming. The IoT can be used as a tool to combat climate change through greenhouse automation; monitor and manage water, soil and crops; increase productivity; control insecticides/pesticides; detect plant diseases; increase the rate of crop sales; cattle monitoring etc. Agricultural Informatics: Automation Using the IoT and Machine Learning focuses on all these topics, including a few case studies, and they give a clear indication as to why these techniques should now be widely adopted by the agriculture and farming industries.

Precision farming is an agricultural management system using global navigation satellite systems, geographic information systems, remote sensing, and data management systems for optimizing the use of nutrients, water, seed, pesticides and energy in heterogeneous field situations. This book provides extensive information on the state-of-the-art of research on precision crop protection and recent developments in site-specific application technologies for the management of weeds, arthropod pests, pathogens and nematodes. It gives the reader an up-to-date and in-depth review of both basic and applied research developments. The chapters discuss I) biology and epidemiology of pests, II) new sensor technologies, III) applications of multi-scale sensor systems, IV) sensor detection of pests in growing crops, V) spatial and non-spatial data management, VI) impact of pest heterogeneity and VII) precise mechanical and chemical pest control.

Big data generates around us constantly from daily business, custom use, engineering, and science activities. Sensory data is collected from the internet of things (IoT) and cyber-physical systems (CPS). Merely storing such a massive amount of data is meaningless, as the key point is to identify, locate, and extract valuable knowledge from big data to forecast and support services. Such extracted valuable knowledge is usually referred to as smart data. It is vital to providing suitable decisions in business, science, and engineering applications. Deep Learning Applications for Cyber-Physical Systems provides researchers a platform to present state-of-the-art innovations, research, and designs while implementing methodological and algorithmic solutions to data processing problems and designing and analyzing evolving trends in health informatics and computer-aided diagnosis in deep learning techniques in context with cyber physical systems. Covering topics such as smart medical systems, intrusion detection systems, and predictive analytics, this text is essential for computer scientists, engineers, practitioners, researchers, students, and academicians, especially those interested in the areas of internet of things, machine learning, deep learning, and cyber-physical systems.

Using molecular methods for plant disease diagnosis provides diagnosticians with a number of advantages over more traditional methods. They can allow the identification of morphologically similar species, for example, or the detection of infection prior to symptom formation. Not only can molecular tools help by increasing the efficacy, accuracy and speed of diagnosis; their common technological basis provides further benefits, especially where resources are limited and traditional skills are hard to sustain. This book provides protocols for nucleic acid-based methods currently applied to plant pathogen detection and identification. It takes the practitioner through the full range of molecular diagnostic and detection methods and, as these generic techniques are appropriate for use on any target with minimal modification, also provides a useful resource for students of plant pathology and plant pathologists. Beginning with the background and future directions of the science, it then addresses DNA barcoding, microarrays, polymerase chain reactions (PCR), quality assurance and more, forming a complete reference on the subject.