Plant Pathology, Pests and Immunity

Plant pathology, pests, and immunity is the study of what attacks plants and how plants fight back. It covers the fungi, bacteria, viruses, oomycetes, nematodes, and insects that cause disease and damage, alongside the layered defence systems plants deploy to detect and resist them. Globally, pests and pathogens destroy an estimated 20–40% of crop production every year — a staggering loss that places this field at the centre of food security. Plant Pathology, Pests and Immunity seeks to understand these conflicts well enough to tip the balance in the plant's favour.

Older crop protection leaned heavily on chemical control — spray the problem away. That approach bred resistant pests, harmed beneficial organisms, and raised environmental and health concerns. The modern field has shifted decisively toward understanding immunity itself: how plants recognize invaders through receptor proteins, trigger defence cascades, and resist disease through their own genetics. Integrated pest management, durable resistance breeding, and biological control now sit alongside judicious chemical use. Programming at the Plant Biology Conference in this area reflects that shift, pairing molecular immunologists with field pathologists and entomologists in pursuit of durable, sustainable protection grounded in plant disease resistance.

This work matters to anyone invested in keeping crops alive and harvests intact. Pathologists, entomologists, plant immunologists, breeders, and students converge on shared, high-stakes problems: pathogens evolve to overcome resistance, pests develop tolerance to controls, and new diseases spread across borders with global trade and a warming climate. The recurring question — how to build protection that lasts rather than fails within a few seasons — keeps the field both urgent and intellectually demanding.