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Applied Sciences
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Advances in Pests and Pathogens Treatment and Biological Control
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Advances in Pests and Pathogens Treatment and Biological Control

A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Agricultural Science and Technology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 September 2023) | Viewed by 12684

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Tomasz Krzysztof Oszako

E-Mail Website1 Website2
Guest Editor
Department of Forest Protection, Forest Research Institute in Sękocin Stary, Braci Leśnej 3, 05-090 Raszyn, Poland
Interests: forest protection; plant pathology; oomycetes; biodiversity; e-nose; BCA; IPM; VOC; GC-MS; phosphites; phosphogipsum; silicon
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Lassaâd Belbahri

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Laboratory of Soil Biology, Department of Biology, University of Neuchatel, 2000 Neuchatel, Switzerland
Interests: molecular and cellular biology; plant physiology; plant biotechnology; applied plant biotechnology; molecular biology; genetic tools used in ecology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. Justyna A. Nowakowska

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Guest Editor
Institute of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Biology and Environmental Sciences, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw, Wóycickiego 1/3 Street, 01-938 Warsaw, Poland
Interests: molecular biology; molecular genetics; forestry; forensic sciences; biotechnology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The European Commission Directive on Integrated Pest Management (IPM) requires the use of predominantly biological methods of plant protection, in line with society's expectations for the protection of the environment and human health. In this context, the research of new organisms (Biological Control Agents—BCA) with potential to replace existing pesticides is necessary.

For this Special Issue, we are inviting the submission of both review articles and scientific contributions on comprehensive and new approaches to the problem of pest control in agriculture, horticulture and forestry. Practitioners and scientists (geneticists, entomologists, phytopathologists and other disciplines) are encouraged to join the discussion on the implementation of IPM in current practice, the development of new methods based on potential BCAs or other genetic methods (including genetically modified trees—GMT or GMOs). We welcome original research as well as review articles.

Prof. Dr. Tomasz Krzysztof Oszako
Dr. Lassaâd Belbahri
Prof. Dr. Justyna A. Nowakowska
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Applied Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • pest and disease control
  • IPM
  • BCA
  • GMO
  • GMT
  • gene expression/silencing

Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

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17 pages, 3146 KiB  
Article
Addition of Organic Matter to Pine Plantations on Agricultural Land Positively Alters the Mycobiome of Agricultural Soils
by Tadeusz Malewski, Piotr Borowik, Ireneusz Olejarski, Artur Rutkiewicz, Adam Okorski and Tomasz Oszako
Appl. Sci. 2023, 13(9), 5800; https://doi.org/10.3390/app13095800 - 08 May 2023
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1163
Abstract
Afforestation of former agricultural land poses a real challenge for foresters because soil life is often severely limited by the loss of natural soil fungal diversity. In addition, former agricultural soils have low levels of fungal species typical of forest soils, which have [...] Read more.
Afforestation of former agricultural land poses a real challenge for foresters because soil life is often severely limited by the loss of natural soil fungal diversity. In addition, former agricultural soils have low levels of fungal species typical of forest soils, which have a unique microbiome that plays a protective role (antagonists, plant growth promoters, mycorrhizal fungi, etc.). This study aimed to determine the effect of using organic material in the form of bark compost, wood waste, and sawdust to improve the soil mycobiome of soils that have been damaged by their agricultural use. This study used experimental plots established 20 years ago, and we compared the biodiversity of the treated soils with that of the control soils by analysing soil samples with powerful molecular methods. Next-generation sequencing analysis of DNA extracted from soil samples and subsequent analysis of their species composition and biodiversity showed that the mycobiome of soil fungi has been altered by the addition of various forms of organic material. The proportion of fungi belonging to the Ascomycota decreased in favour of species from the Basidiomycota and Mucoromycota. The dominant fungal groups in the soil of the control area were Sagenomella, Wilcoxina, Oidiodendron, Meliniomyces, and Penicillium. Enrichment with organic matter by adding bark compost under the roots led to an increase in Penicillium, Inocybe, and Amphinema. The application of bark compost on the surface led to an increase in the dominance of Inocybe fungi in the soil. The mycobiome of the plant to which woody debris was applied was characterised by a marked dominance of fungi of the genera Russula, Oidiodendron, and Penicillium. Similar ratios were found in the plant to which sawdust was applied, where the fungi Meliniomyces, Penicillium, Oidiodendron, and Russula dominated. A comparative analysis of fungal diversity with the Shannon diversity index showed that the most diverse fungal communities were found in the sawdust plant (6.56), while the control sample (a soil sample from an agricultural area where no organic material was applied) had an index of 5.71. After the treatments, more potential antagonists against pine pathogens and mycorrhizal fungi were found to form beneficial symbiotic relationships with them. In our opinion, the results of this study show that it is worthwhile to introduce different forms of organic matter to post-agricultural land to improve soil biodiversity and mycorrhizal associations of pine roots with fungi to ensure the sustainability of the first generation of forests created. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Pests and Pathogens Treatment and Biological Control)
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17 pages, 10139 KiB  
Article
Detection and Identification of Potato-Typical Diseases Based on Multidimensional Fusion Atrous-CNN and Hyperspectral Data
by Wenqiang Gao, Zhiyun Xiao and Tengfei Bao
Appl. Sci. 2023, 13(8), 5023; https://doi.org/10.3390/app13085023 - 17 Apr 2023
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 1933
Abstract
As one of the world’s most crucial crops, the potato is an essential source of nutrition for human activities. However, several diseases pose a severe threat to the yield and quality of potatoes. Timely and accurate detection and identification of potato diseases are [...] Read more.
As one of the world’s most crucial crops, the potato is an essential source of nutrition for human activities. However, several diseases pose a severe threat to the yield and quality of potatoes. Timely and accurate detection and identification of potato diseases are of great importance. Hyperspectral imaging has emerged as an essential tool that provides rich spectral and spatial distribution information and has been widely used in potato disease detection and identification. Nevertheless, the accuracy of prediction is often low when processing hyperspectral data using a one-dimensional convolutional neural network (1D-CNN). Additionally, conventional three-dimensional convolutional neural networks (3D-CNN) often require high hardware consumption while processing hyperspectral data. In this paper, we propose an Atrous-CNN network structure that fuses multiple dimensions to address these problems. The proposed structure combines the spectral information extracted by 1D-CNN, the spatial information extracted by 2D-CNN, and the spatial spectrum information extracted by 3D-CNN. To enhance the perceptual field of the convolution kernel and reduce the loss of hyperspectral data, null convolution is utilized in 1D-CNN and 2D-CNN to extract data features. We tested the proposed structure on three real-world potato diseases and achieved recognition accuracy of up to 0.9987. The algorithm presented in this paper effectively extracts hyperspectral data feature information using three different dimensional CNNs, leading to higher recognition accuracy and reduced hardware consumption. Therefore, it is feasible to use the 1D-CNN network and hyperspectral image technology for potato plant disease identification. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Pests and Pathogens Treatment and Biological Control)
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14 pages, 3155 KiB  
Article
Computational Biology and Machine Learning Approaches Identify Rubber Tree (Hevea brasiliensis Muell. Arg.) Genome Encoded MicroRNAs Targeting Rubber Tree Virus 1
by Muhammad Aleem Ashraf, Hafiza Kashaf Tariq, Xiao-Wen Hu, Jallat Khan and Zhi Zou
Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(24), 12908; https://doi.org/10.3390/app122412908 - 15 Dec 2022
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 1453
Abstract
Tapping panel dryness (TPD), a complex physiological syndrome associated with the rubber tree (Hevea brasiliensis Muell. Arg.), causes cessation of latex drainage upon tapping and thus threatens rubber production. Rubber tree virus 1 (RTV1) is a novel positive-sense single-stranded RNA virus from [...] Read more.
Tapping panel dryness (TPD), a complex physiological syndrome associated with the rubber tree (Hevea brasiliensis Muell. Arg.), causes cessation of latex drainage upon tapping and thus threatens rubber production. Rubber tree virus 1 (RTV1) is a novel positive-sense single-stranded RNA virus from the Betaflexiviridae (genus Capillovirus), which has been established to cause TPD. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play an important role in the interplay between viruses and host cells. In this study, we identified the rubber tree genome-encoded miRNAs and their therapeutic targets against RTV1. We applied computational algorithms to predict target binding sites of rubber tree miRNAs potentially targeting RTV1 RNA genome. Mature rubber-tree miRNAs are retrieved from the miRBase database and are used for hybridization of the RTV1 genome. A total of eleven common rubber-tree miRNAs were identified based on consensus genomic positions. The consensus of four algorithms predicted the hybridization sites of the hbr-miR396a and hbr-miR398 at common genomic loci (6676 and 1840), respectively. A miRNA-regulatory network of rubber tree was constructed with the RTV1— ORFs using Circos, is illustrated to analyze therapeutic targets. Overall, this study provides the first computational evidence of the reliable miRNA–mRNA interaction between specific rubber tree miRNAs and RTV1 genomic RNA transcript. Therefore, the predicted data offer valuable evidence for the development of RTV1-resistant rubber tree in the future. Our work suggests that similar computational host miRNA prediction strategies are warranted for identification of the miRNA targets in the other viral genomes. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Pests and Pathogens Treatment and Biological Control)
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18 pages, 6003 KiB  
Article
The Effect of Acaricide Control of the Two-Spotted Spider Mite Tetranychus urticae Koch on the Cultivation of Sugar Beet (Beta vulgaris L.) and on the Size and Quality of the Yield
by Jan Bocianowski, Magdalena Jakubowska, Daniel Zawada and Renata Dobosz
Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(23), 12139; https://doi.org/10.3390/app122312139 - 27 Nov 2022
Viewed by 1559
Abstract
Field experiments (in the 2019–2021) were carried out at the Department of Field Experimentation of the Institute of Plant Protection—National Research Institute in Winna Góra, the purpose of which was to test the insecticidal and acaricidal effectiveness of sugar beet cultivation protection against [...] Read more.
Field experiments (in the 2019–2021) were carried out at the Department of Field Experimentation of the Institute of Plant Protection—National Research Institute in Winna Góra, the purpose of which was to test the insecticidal and acaricidal effectiveness of sugar beet cultivation protection against Tetranychus urticae and to assess its impact on the size and quality of the sugar beet crop. In the experiment, the following acaricides were used: spirodiclofen—240 g—22.11%, mixture of hexythiazox—250 g—23.15% and fenpyroximate—51.2 g—5.02% and insecto-acaricide paraffin oil—770 g L−1 (89.6%) and abamectine—18 g—1.88%. The controls were plants left without chemical protection. The plants were sprayed when ten mobile individuals/two spotted spider mites appeared on the leaves. Chemical treatments were carried out in the full growing season in the phase of leaf rosette formation (July–August). In the second half of October, the plant density (PD) in the field was estimated. Parameters characterizing the size and quality of the crop were calculated: sugar beet yield (SBY), biological sugar yield (BSY), pure sugar yield (PSY), sugar content (SC), refined of sugar content (RSC), the yield of preferential sugar (YPS), recoverable sugar (RS), potassium molasses (PM), sodium molasses (SM), α-amino nitrogen (α-AN), alkalinity factor (AF) and standard molasses losses (SML). The years were statistically significantly different for all 13 traits. Statistical differences were observed in the mean values of the observed parameters in these years, except for α-amino nitrogen (α-AN) and alkalinity factor (AF). The mean values of SBY, biological sugar yield (BSY), pure sugar yield (PSY) and sodium molasses (SM) differed depending on the type of protection applied. Positive correlations were observed for 28 pairs of traits, but negative statistically significant relationships were observed between 11 pairs of traits. The first two canonical variates accounted for 85.49% of the total variability between the individual combinations. The significant positive relationship with the first canonical variate was found for PD, BSY, PSY, SC, RSC, YPS, but negative for SM. The CV2 was negatively correlated with: SBY, BSY, PSY, RS, PM, SM, α-AN and SML. The greatest variation in terms of all the 13 traits jointly was found for Vertigo 018 EC in 2020 and Vertigo 018 EC in 2021. The greatest similarity was found between control in 2019 and Ortus 05 SC in 2019. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Pests and Pathogens Treatment and Biological Control)
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11 pages, 819 KiB  
Article
The Role of Resorcinolic Lipids of Caryopsis Surface in the Process of Cereal Infection by Rhizoctonia solani and Fusarium culmorum
by Elżbieta G. Magnucka, Małgorzata P. Oksińska and Stanisław J. Pietr
Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(15), 7735; https://doi.org/10.3390/app12157735 - 01 Aug 2022
Viewed by 1157
Abstract
Cereal caryopses are rich in 5-n-alk(en)ylresorcinols, antimicrobial compounds. In this paper, the correlation between the presence of resorcinolic lipids on the surface of cereal grains and the susceptibility of their seedlings to infection by Rhizoctonia solani or Fusarium culmorum was evaluated. [...] Read more.
Cereal caryopses are rich in 5-n-alk(en)ylresorcinols, antimicrobial compounds. In this paper, the correlation between the presence of resorcinolic lipids on the surface of cereal grains and the susceptibility of their seedlings to infection by Rhizoctonia solani or Fusarium culmorum was evaluated. The declines in length of both the roots and coleoptiles were observed in barley seedlings of Scarlett and Rabel cultivars grown from the wax-impoverished seeds infected with F92 and F93 strains of Rhizoctonia solani, respectively. Regarding wheat, R. solani F93 significantly reduced only the coleoptile growth. Resorcinolic lipids, being the mixture of homologues with C17–C25 carbon chains, were the only compounds washed off wheat caryopses by chloroform. Moreover, the better anti-Rhizoctonia solani F93 activity of 5-n-alk(en)ylresorcinols of wheat grains than that of rye caryopsis lipids was proven by the poisoned medium technique. Two saturated homologues (C21:0 and C23:0) were the most effective inhibitors of the mycelial growth of this fungus. Thus, the susceptibilities of barley and wheat seedlings to some fungal pathogens have been found to be related to the content and composition of 5-n-alk(en)ylresorcinols in the waxy layer of cereal grains, confirming the protective role of these compounds, during the early stages of cereal development. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Pests and Pathogens Treatment and Biological Control)
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Review

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18 pages, 1699 KiB  
Review
Recent Advances in Encapsulation Techniques of Plant Growth-Promoting Microorganisms and Their Prospects in the Sustainable Agriculture
by Amel Balla, Allaoua Silini, Hafsa Cherif-Silini, Ali Chenari Bouket, Faizah N. Alenezi and Lassaad Belbahri
Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(18), 9020; https://doi.org/10.3390/app12189020 - 08 Sep 2022
Cited by 19 | Viewed by 4535
Abstract
In addition to changing global demography and global warming, agricultural production systems around the world are threatened by intensive agricultural practices (overuse of land and excessive use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides) that deplete soils by affecting their dynamics and their fertility, pollute [...] Read more.
In addition to changing global demography and global warming, agricultural production systems around the world are threatened by intensive agricultural practices (overuse of land and excessive use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides) that deplete soils by affecting their dynamics and their fertility, pollute the environment, lower production, and alter biodiversity on a large scale. The use of bioformulations based on PGPMs (plant growth-promoting microorganisms) seems to be a promising and sustainable strategy to overcome these threats, thanks to their tolerance to various biotic and abiotic stresses and via their beneficial effects in promising plant growth, pest protection, bioremediation, and restoration of degraded lands. In recent years, particular attention has been paid to encapsulated formulations because they offer several advantages over conventional bioformulation (liquid and solid) related to shelf life, problems of survival and viability in the environment, and the efficiency of rhizospheric colonization. This review focuses on the types of encapsulations and the different technologies used in this process as well as the most commonly used substrates and additives. It also provides an overview on the application of encapsulated bioformulations as biofertilizers, biopesticides, or other biostimulators and summarizes the knowledge of the scientific literature on the development of nanoencapsulation in this sector. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Pests and Pathogens Treatment and Biological Control)
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