Delve Publishing Bacteriophages for Plant Disease Control

The growing need for increased food production globally has led the farmers and scientists equally to devise means to increase plant productivity through several practices, including disease management. A number of plant diseases caused by bacteria have huge economic impact on global crop productivity. Although chemical control practices may be effective, they pose a threat to the environment and to the food chain. With the discovery of antibiotics in the 1940s, the concept of using bacteriophages was abandoned. However, its use has re-emerged, and is a rapidly growing area for controlling bacterial plant pathogens. In this book, we present the historical and recent developments, concepts, factors, challenges and concerns of using bacteriophages for plant disease control. We hope that the book will be a valuable reference for students, researchers, teachers as well as agriculturists while choosing environmentally safe and sustainable plant pest management techniques. About the Author Dr Prashant Pant, is an Assistant Professor of Botany in Dyal Singh College, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India. He has been teaching for more than 5 years now and his main areas have been Bioinformatics, Molecular Biology and Genomics at the college. His PhD was on understanding the Microbial Succession using a Metagenomic approach in a Barren mined-out site undergoing ecological restoration. For this, he deployed many molecular and computational Biology tool and techniques. He has several publications (articles and book chapters) in International Journals and International Publications. Currently, he is also Chief Editor of Bioinformatics Review and a co-founder/Executive Chief Editor of a Science Journal in Hindi Language Swadeshi Vigyan for the native language speaking communities. Both the Journals are a service to the scientific community as they are fully open access. Dr Pratibha Pant, is an Assistant Professor of Botany in Daulat Ram College, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India and has a teaching experience of more than 6 years. She is a plant virologist and biotechnologist by training and has done her PhD in Characterization of Begomoviral genomes from Papaya from Department of Botany, University of Delhi. During her PhD, she utilized a combination of molecular biology and Computational Biology tools to analyze begomoviral genomes and to her credit, a couple of novel begomoviruses have been isolated, sequenced and reported in public databases. Dr Prerna Pandey, a biotechnologist with several years of wet lab research experience, worked at International Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, New Delhi. Her field of research in PhD included isolation and molecular characterization of geminiviruses, genome sequencing, gene annotation, and gene silencing using the RNA interference technology. She has also worked at Transasia Biomedicals and Advance Enzyme Technologies as a scientist. Prerna has published papers in peer-reviewed journals, and has submitted a number of annotated Geminiviral genome sequences in the GenBank, including two novel ones. She has also completed her editing and proof-reading courses from Society for the promotion of Editors and Proof-readers, UK and now works as a freelance scientific editor and writer. When Prerna is not busy with her assignments, she loves to explore historical places.