The volume focuses on novel and effective biological and biotechnological methods for managing major plant parasitic nematodes in economically important agricultural crops. Nematodes develop a wide variety of interactions with soil microbes and host plants, and cause enormous losses in crop yields equivalent to around USD 173 billion annually. In view of growing concern for pesticide contamination in crops, coupled with ban on several efficacious pesticides, and increasing demand for organic foods, the biological and biotechnological approaches offer a good alternative to chemicals for managing nematode infestations in agricultural crops. The book embodies twenty-two chapters which are arranged in two groups. The first group covers different novel methods of nematode management such as biotechnological, biopesticides, microbial consortia, host resistance, omics technology, transgenics, nano-nematicides, nano-diagnosis, etc. The second groups of chapters describe important nematode problems in major crops such as cereals, vegetables, pulses, spices, wood yielding conifers, etc. Overall, the book collates the latest information on above topics and offers practical solutions to the limitations and challenges in the existing management technologies. This book is of interest and serves up-to-date and elaborated information to agriculture researchers, teachers, scientists, under-graduates, post-graduates, plant nematologists, plant pathologists, plant protectionists, agronomists, horticulturalists, helminthologists, extension workers, and NGOs.  

Nematode Diseases of Crops and their Sustainable Management focuses on methods to recognize and identify nematode attackers in agriculturally important crops, offering ecologically sustainable and economically viable strategies and measures for the management of nematode infestations and diseases. The book analyzes nematode pests as major constraints in global crop production and explores the limitations of existing nematode management technologies. It offers comprehensive information through individually focused chapters on major nematode problems in internationally important food, fiber and beverage crops as well as in mushrooms, polyhouse agriculture and forest flora with regard to distribution, and much more. In view of the highly damaging nature of the disease complexes and complexity in their management, independent chapters on nematode-fungus and nematode-bacteria disease complexes and their management are also presented.

Plant parasitic nematodes are major pests of agricultural crops and cause huge monetary losses. There is a very high risk of spread of plant-parasitic nematodes from one country to another, with the movement of plants and planting materials such as seeds, bulbs, corms, suckers, tubers, rhizomes, rooted plants, nursery stock and cut flowers. In view of the large quantities and the wide variety of materials being imported and exported, it is important to assess the status of invasive nematodes and their quarantine importance in relation to agricultural trade. This book contains information on around 100 invasive nematodes and their potential threat in different countries. Each nematode entry includes information on authentic identification, geographical distribution, risk of introduction, host ranges, symptoms, biology, ecology, planting material liable to carry the nematode(s), nematode vectors, chance of establishment, likely impact, and phytosanitary measures. There are detailed accounts of diagnosis procedures including sampling, isolation, detection and identification of nematodes based on morphological and molecular characters. The book offers a global perspective on invasive plant-parasitic nematodes and useful for practitioners, professionals, scientists, researchers, students, and government officials working in plant quarantine and biosecurity.

This study has demonstrated that biological management of wilt, root-knot and disease complex can be successfully achieved with the application of the three developed biopesticides viz., Biowilt-X, Bionem-X and Biocomp-X and gives special focus on their deployment on a commercial scale. The used strians of biocontrol agents were found highly tolerant to the fungicides such as carbendazim (bavistin 50 WP), mancozeb (dithane M-45 75 WP), metalaxyl (apron 35 SD), captan (captaf 50 WP) and thiram (TMTD 75 WP) commonly used by farmers in India. Hence pesticidal contamination in soil will not affect their effectivenes. This has broadened the use of the present biopesticides in conjugation with pesticides under integrated disease management. The cost of the newly produced biopesticides is estimated Rs. 45/500 g pack (equivalent to US $ 1.0) which is much less than the cost of contemporary biopesticides available in the Indian market. Hence application cost of biopesticide for 1 hectare comes around Rs 100 (US $ 2.0) which is well affordable to small and poor farmers of India and other developing countries.