Consider the following:

1.   Birds

2.   Dust blowing

3.  Rain

4.  Wind blowing

Which of the above spread plant diseases?

Solution

Extensive and severe epidemics of plant diseases are mostly the results of wind transmission of the pathogens. Splashing rain drops mostly transmit the foliar diseases from leaf to leaf, from shoot to shoot and even from plant to plant in case of closely spaced crops. Birds play a minor role in disease transmission in plants by way of dispersal of seeds of higher flowering parasite etc. Thus, plant disease can spread by all of the mentioned agents.