COLLEGE WORK IN PLANT PATHOLOGY^ 



FREDERICK H. BLODGETT 

 Texas Agricultural Experiment Station, College Station, Tex. 



Phytopathology is that branch of botanical science which deals 

 with the changes produced by parasitic fungi and bacteria upon 

 the host plant, together with the remedies for the resulting plant 

 diseases. The science of phytopathology may be divided into 

 three sections, as in the case of zoo-pathology. These are diag- 

 nosis, etiology and therapeutics. Of these, practically all the work 

 that is done falls under the first two, strongly in contrast with 

 the work on animals, where curative measures are so important. 

 With the usually much shorter generations in plants, and the 

 means of rapidly increasing the number of indi^'iduals not availa- 

 ble in zoology, the need of restoring a diseased individual to 

 health is usually less important than is the prevention of diseases 

 in other individuals. Preventive medicine has been the rule in 

 botany rather than the novelty as in zoology. The application 

 of curative measures is practically excluded through the absence 

 of a circulatory system in plants by which any remedial sub- 

 stances could be distributed through the tissues. Surface appli- 

 cations alone are generally possible, and these do not restore to 

 health, but only prevent or check injury. The practice of the 

 phj^topathologist is "a pound of prevention and only an ounce 

 of cure." 



In the examination of diseased plants the two phases of the 

 study that are ordinarily of the most importance are the deter- 

 mination of the trouble itself and of the mode of attack. With 

 the present knowledge of parasitic fungi these two details are often 



^The discussion here presented is condensed from a paper read before the Con- 

 ference for the Advancement of Agriculture at the Texas Agricultural and Mechan- 

 ical College, February 10, 1913. The omitted portions were historical or explana- 

 tory in character, and not essential to the subject when prepared for printing. 



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