This book aims to describe, though in a quite light way, the social role of plant diseases, letting the reader know the topical importance of plant pathology, as well as the role of plant pathologists in our society. Plant diseases caused, in the past, significant economic losses, deaths, famine, wars, and migration. Some of them marked the history of entire countries. One example among many: the potato late blight in Ireland in 1845. Today plant diseases are still the cause of deaths, often silent, in developing countries, and relevant economic losses in the industrialized ones. This book, written with much passion, neither wants to be a plant pathology text. On the contrary, it wants to describe, in simple words, often enriched by the author's personal experience, various plant diseases that, in different times and countries, did cause severe losses and damages. Besides the so-called "historical plant diseases", in the process of writing this book, she wanted to describe also some diseases that, though not causing famine or billions of losses, because of their peculiarity, might be of interest for the readers. Thus, this book has not been conceived and written for experts, but for a broader audience, of different ages, willing to learn more about plant health and to understand the reasons why so many people in the past and nowadays choose to be plant pathologists. This is because plants produce most of the food that we consume, that we expect to be healthy and safe, and because plants make the world beautiful. The title "Spores" is evocative of the reproduction mean of fungi. Spores are small, light structures, often moving fast. The chapters of this book are short and concise. Just like spores!

This book will present information on Pantanal vegetation including an updated checklist of flora, useful plants, ecological aspects and some topics never published for this region, such as lichens. It aims to be a reference for researchers, graduate and undergraduate students as well as stakeholders and decision makers interested in the flora and vegetation of one of the world's largest tropical wetlands.

Of the global population of more than 7 billion people, some 800 million do not have enough to eat today. By 2050, the population is expected to exceed 9 billion. It has been estimated that some 15% of food production is lost to plant diseases; in developing countries losses may be much higher. Historically, plant diseases have had catastrophic impact on food production. For example: potato blight caused the Irish famine in 1845; brown spot of rice caused the Great Bengal Famine of 1943; southern corn leaf blight caused a devastating epidemic on the US corn crop in 1970. Food security is threatened by an ongoing sequence of plant diseases, some persistent for decades or centuries, others more opportunistic. Wheat blast and banana xanthomonas wilt are two contrasting examples of many that currently threaten food production. Other emerging diseases will follow. The proposed title aims to provide a synthesis of expert knowledge to address this central challenge to food security for the 21st century. Chapters [5] and [11] are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Abiotic stress has a detrimental impact on the living organisms in a specific environment and constitutes a major constraint to global agricultural production. The adverse environmental conditions that plants encounter during their life cycle not only disturb their metabolic reactions, but also hamper their growth and development on cellular and whole plant levels. These conditions are of great concern, particularly for those countries whose economies primarily rely on agriculture. Under abiotic stresses, plants amalgamate multiple external stress cues to bring about a coordinated response and establish mechanisms to mitigate such stresses by triggering a cascade of events leading to enhanced tolerance.

"Physiological Mechanisms and Adaptation Strategies in Plants under Changing Environment," "Volume 2" displays the ways by which plants utilize and integrate many common signals and subsequent pathways to cope with less favourable environmental conditions." "The book also describes the use of contemporary tools for the improvement of plants under such stressed environments. Concise yet comprehensive, "Physiological Mechanisms and Adaptation Strategies in Plants under Changing Environment," "Volume 2" is an indispensable resource for researchers, students, environmentalists and many others in this burgeoning area of research."

This volume is a monograph of the genus Diplusodon (Lythraceae), written by the world authority on this plant group. Diplusodon is a monophyletic genus of shrubs and subshrubs, with showy, 6-merous, actinomorphic flowers, and floral tubes on which the sepals alternate with conspicuous epicalyx segments. The capsular fruit contains winged seeds and, uniquely for the family, is divided by a bipartite placenta with two semi-lunate septa. Diplusodon is the second largest genus in the Lythraceae and occurs mostly in the Cerrado Biome, the floristically diverse savannah that covers more than two million km2 of the Central Brazilian Plateau, extending west into Bolivia, south to Paraguay and east to the Caatinga. A total of 104 species and eight varieties are recognized in the genus, for which 46 lectotypes, one neotype, one new status and one new combination are designated, nine new species are described, and 15 taxa are placed in synonymy. New information on floral and vegetative morphology, pollen, cytology, chemistry, floral biology, and habitat are provided for the genus. In addition, keys to the species are accompanied by descriptions, illustrations, distribution maps, and assignment of conservation status.