History

of
PLANT
PATHOLOGY
Prepared by: Mellprie B. Marin, PhD
(for SY 2020-2021)
PRE-SCIENTIFIC
PERIOD
 HISTORY

Greeks and Hebrews

(500 BC – 280 BC)
“Diseases to crops were God’s
punishment for their sins; also
attributed to bad weather and
unfavorable conditions.”
 HISTORY
Deuteronomy 28:22
Yahweh will afflict you with the
wasting diseases and with the fever
and with the inflammation and with
the scorching heat and with the
sword and with the blight and with the
mildew, and they shall pursue you
{until you perish}.
 HISTORY

Romans (320 BC – 286 BC)

– held festivals (Robigalia) to appease
their rust god Robigus
 HISTORY
Aristotle, Homer and Theophrastus –
recorded diseases such as: blight, mildew,
rusts and blasts

Homer Aristotle
 HISTORY

blasts of Rice
 HISTORY

blights
 HISTORY

mildews
 HISTORY

rusts
 HISTORY
Theophrastus
(“Father of Botany”) –
recorded diseases of
grains, trees and
vegetables in his
book
Historia Plantarum
 HISTORY

Pliny the Elder – wrote about blight and

rust; recommended early sowing of
grains allowed wheat and barley to
escape rusts and other diseases
 HISTORY
Pliny the Elder –
 HISTORY

BEGINNINGS
and ADVANCES
in SCIENTIFIC
STUDIES
 HISTORY
• Hans and Zaccharias Jansen –
invented the compound
microscope in 1590
 HISTORY

hand lens spectacles

telescope
 HISTORY
• Robert Hooke (1665)– illustrated
in detail a plant pathogenic
microscopic fungus
 HISTORY
• Anton van Leeuwenhoek (1683)– found
bacteria, protozoa and other
microorganisms in water
• Pier Antonio Micheli (1729)– described
several genera of fungi
and made illustrations of fruiting
bodies and spores in Nova
Plantarum Genera
• Heinrich Anton de Bary – fungi are the
cause and not the result of plant
disease; acceptance of the Germ Theory;
• this made him the
• “Father of Plant
Pathology”
 Thomas Burrill
• – studied bacteria and proved that
• these can incite disease in plants
• Martinus Beijerinck(1898) –
plant diseases are caused by very
small entities that could pass
through bacterial filters
“Father of Virology”
• John Turberville Needham(1743) – first to
observe nematodes inside wheat galls
Nathan Cobb (1859) –
provided the
foundations for
nematode taxonomy
and described over
1000 different
nematode species
Pierre Marie Alexis Millardet (1882) –
discovered Bordeaux mixture, a highly effective
fungicide;
• - formed the foundation for chemical control
of plant diseases
• - protecting grape vineyards
• from downy mildew fungus
(Plasmopara viticola )
Van der Plank (1963) – published a book (Plant
Diseases: Epidemics and Control)
Plant Disease Epidemiology – the study of
disease increase in plant populations