It is the discipline that is responsible for investigating all the diseases that can destroy plants and their way of fighting them. This study also includes the analysis of pollutants that damage plants and abiotic changes or physiological conditions of the same. However, their analyzes leave out the damage that insects or other herbivorous mammals can cause.
In ancient times, man thought that the diseases contracted by plants were linked to supernatural events. However, as a result of the evolution of phytopathology, man discovered that the true culprits of these diseases were fungi, viruses and other bacteria.
Plant pathology generally tries to structure diseases according to their nature, whether they are biotic or abiotic. In this sense, the biotic elements capable of damaging plants are bacteria, fungi and viruses. While abiotic factors are represented by pollution, droughts, floods and wind.
It is important to highlight that a good control of plant diseases has been a forceful element when producing good quality food and provides significant reductions in the agricultural use of water, land and other inputs.
When plants become diseased, the agricultural sector can suffer significant economic losses. According to statistics, provided by the organization of agriculture and food, it is estimated that many of the pests that affect crops are the cause of the loss of at least 25% of them.
It is important to highlight the fact that the world population grows and grows every day and the spaces destined to cultivation are becoming smaller, making it more difficult to work agriculture, which is the nutritional support that humanity has. Hence the importance of phytopathology, since through it, farmers can prevent future attacks by infectious agents that may go unnoticed, but are lethal to plants. At the economic level, phytopathology is also essential since many of the losses in agricultural production are due to this type of difficulties
On the other hand, it is necessary to point out that phytopathology also receives the collaboration of other specialties such as microbiology, physiology, botany, genetics, molecular biology and biochemistry.
