Biocontrol Agents for Fungal Plant Diseases Management

Abstract

Plant fungal diseases are the most destructive diseases where the fungal pathogens attack many economic crops causing yield losses, which affect directly many countries’ economy. The great Irish Famine in 19th century was due to potato (a great portion of Irish diets) was attacked by an oomycete pathogen Phytophthora infestans causing late blight disease which destroyed the potato crop for several years (1845–1852). Since this date the plant fungal diseases have a great attention from the researchers. Control of fungal diseases using different fungicides has dangerous effects on human beings as well as animals by precipitating in the plant tissues and then transfer to human and animals causing many health complications. Hence, the biological control of plant pathogenic fungi became the most important issue, due to the chemical risk to control the fungal diseases. From 1990’s the importance of using microorganisms was increased as biocontrol agents to decrease the chemical uses and their hazardous for human and animal health topics. In this chapter, using of different microorganism as biological control agents of plant fungal diseases were reviewed, as well as using chemicals in controlling fungal diseases and their effects on plants, environment and common health impacts.