Reducing the Use of Pesticides with Site-Specific Application: The Chemical Control of Rhizoctonia solani as a Case of Study for the Management of Soil-Borne Diseases.

Reducing our reliance on pesticides is an essential step towards the sustainability of agricultural production. One approach involves the rational use of pesticides combined with innovative crop management. Most control strategies currently focus on the temporal aspect of epidemics, e.

Interplay between parasitism and host ontogenic resistance in the epidemiology of the soil-borne plant pathogen Rhizoctonia solani.

Spread of soil-borne fungal plant pathogens is mainly driven by the amount of resources the pathogen is able to capture and exploit should it behave either as a saprotroph or a parasite. Despite their importance in understanding the fungal spread in agricultural ecosystems, experimental data related to exploitation of infected host plants by the pathogen remain scarce. Using Rhizoctonia solani / Raphanus sativus as a model pathosystem, we have obtained evidence on the link between ontogenic resistance of a tuberizing host and (i) its susceptibility to the pathogen and (ii) after infection, the ability of the fungus to spread in soil.