Molecular aeromycology: what is it and how can it save the health of crop plants?

Depending on the continent, region of the world, location, type of the crop, cultivar and the weather conditions in the particular season crop plants lose from a few percent to the total amount of yield. A high number of plant pathogens belong to the kingdom of Fungi; they can cause enormous problems with plant health and can contribute to the decrease of not only yield quantity but also its quality. One of the solutions highly promoted in One Health concept are decision support systems helping in early detection and identification of pathogens or indicating the conditions which may trigger their development at a given site and time. Ideally, these early warning systems would detect minute amounts of pathogens in the air and warn the farmers before the problem occurs. The lecture will contain the examples of successful use of spore samplers to monitor fluctuations of the spores of fungal plant pathogens worldwide, with the special focus on the System for Forecasting Disease Epidemics operated by the author. Conference participants will learn how such systems are organized, how they work, what are the results of spore trapping and how it contributes to crop protection and plant health. More and more often monitoring becomes automated and the spore detection relies on DNA-based diagnostics. This all leads to the novel term of molecular aeromycology. The unique combination of spore trapping and molecular detection of pathogen DNA became a very useful modern way to combat plant diseases in the manner which is the least destructive to environment.