Postharvest Pathology

Postharvest losses due to plant pathogens are economically significant and can contribute to food shortages by destroying 20-50% or more of harvested produce in developing countries and 5-25% in developed countries. The global cost of postharvest diseases on horticultural crops is in the billions of dollars.

The Working Group Postharvest Pathology provides a fundamental contribution to mitigating the impact of plant diseases on the world’s economies and food security. This Working Group encourages participation from like-minded scientists to share knowledge of the latest methods, technologies, and science used to examine and control postharvest diseases of fruit, vegetables, arable crops and ornamentals. The aim is to foster progress in the management and reduction of postharvest diseases, thus reducing global hunger and increasing economic returns to producers. Of particular interest are novel technologies, plant pathogen interactions, microbiomes, disease cycles, diagnostics, resistance genes, pathogen genomics, postharvest treatments, epidemiology and biological control.

Postharvest diseases can infect produce in the field, during harvesting and packing or during postharvest storage. Therefore, focusing research on field infections and elucidating the disease cycle are just as relevant as investigating postharvest treatments. Sanitation in the field, during transport and in the packing shed is important for the control of postharvest disease. Novel technologies can also play a part in examining infection processes at the genetic level to identify new targets for disease control. Controlling disease through safe alternatives, be that biocontrol (BC), novel or existing products, and/or cultural control, is the ultimate aim to mitigate any adverse impacts on the environment and human health. Understanding interactions between microbes on plant surfaces can enable manipulation of communities to facilitate better disease control. Plant breeding can utilise outcomes from genetic studies of postharvest pathogens and their hosts by incorporating durable resistance into new cultivars. It is important to ‘know thy enemy’; facilitated by isolations, microscopical examination and DNA sequencing. Epidemiological modelling can result in fewer, more precise and effective application of controls, such as fungicides or BCs, targeting infection periods in the field.