INSECTS AND PLANT DISEASES

Abstract

IN 1801 it was shown for the first time that bacteria could cause plant disease, and this was only eleven years before the first scientific demonstration of a virus. The discovery that insects were concerned in the transmission of plant disease was made in 1901 when Takami showed that ‘dwarf’ or ‘stunt’ of rice was associated with a certain species of leaf–hopper, and at about the same time it was shown that insects could transmit diseases of man and other animals. As early as 1878 Manson had shown that mosquitoes were the vectors of Filaria bancrofti, the nematode causing elephantiasis, and it was Manson, convinced of the importance of mosquitoes as vectors of disease, who stimulated and encouraged Ross in his studies on the transmission of malaria by mosquitoes. The importance of insects in the transmission of the diseases of man has led an increasingly large number of investigators into this field of research. These investigators are trained in the fundamentals of both entomology and medical science. The author of this book pleads for a similar training in the essentials of entomology and botany for potential workers in the field of insect–borne diseases of plants. Insects Transmission of Plant Diseases By Prof. Julian Gilbert Leach. (McGraw–Hill Publications in the Agricultural Sciences.) Pp. xviii + 615. (New York and London: McGraw–Hill Book Co., Inc., 1940.) 42s.