Potential application of fungal and plant metabolites in rust and powdery mildew disease management

Abstract

Rusts and powdery mildews are major limiting factors worldwide for many crops, including legumes. Despite of continued efforts to develop cultivars with high level of genetic diseases resistance, fungicides are, currently, the mainstay control method and a wide range of synthetic compounds are widely used. However, a renewed interest in the discovery of natural products as alternatives to synthetic fungicides application is recently emerged. Considering that spore germination and fungal penetration are key phases for the initial development of biotrophic plant pathogens, a further approach proposed for their management could be the use of natural metabolites produced by plants and fungi as pathogen inhibitors in these pre-penetration stages. With this aim we studied potential application for disease management of eight fungal and plant metabolites. Their inhibitory effect on early stages infection was studied on 4 rusts and 2 powdery mildew species. Results will be presented and critically discussed.