PLANT PRODUCTION AND PROTECTION IN THE FRAME OF MILIEU, MAN AND SCIENCE

Analogous with the evolution of man and nature and with the pace of technological development, plant production, based on integrating exact and natural sciences, finds itself in a contemporary, more critical and more complex situation.
Certainly herbs, being more sensitive to man’s variable interpretation, have been extrapolated from a nature identity to culture plants.

The quantitative and qualitative value of the therapeutic plant identities are strongly affected not only by our wishes but also by unpredictable environmental factors and by the dynamics of pathotypes, being part of the geo-phytopathology concept.

Safeguarding the cultivated herb, from a man-dependency point of view, is the result of three science-coordinating spheres of influence :

• man-independent variables, such as ecosystems

• partially man-dependant aspects, such as phytopathology and plant protection

• man-dependent problems, such as culture trackers, immissions.

The author calls the mastered control – precultural, cultural and postcultural – of these nature-decorating and man-serving identities towards a satisfactory result an art.

International Symposium on Heavy Metals and Pesticide Residues in Medicinal, Aromatic and Spice Plants

C. Van Assche, H. Arijs

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.1989.249.2