Blight

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Blight refers to a specific symptom that can be expressed by plants in response to infection by a plant pathogenic organism. It is simply a rapid and complete chlorosis, browning, then death of plant tissues such as leaves, branches, twigs, or floral organs.[1] Accordingly, many diseases that primarily exhibit this symptom are called blights. Several notable examples are:

  • Late blight of potato, caused by the water mold Phytophthora infestans (Mont.) de Bary, the disease which led to the Irish Potato famine
  • Southern corn leaf blight, caused by the fungus Cochliobolus heterostrophus (Drechs.) Drechs, anamorph Bipolaris maydis (Nisikado & Miyake) Shoemaker, incited a severe loss of corn in the United States in 1970.[2]
  • Chestnut blight, caused by the fungus Cryphonectria parasitica (Murrill) Barr, has nearly completely eradicated mature American chestnuts in North America.
  • Fire blight of pome fruits, caused by the bacterium Erwinia amylovora (Burrill) Winslow et al., is the most severe disease of pear and also is found in apple and raspberry, among others.
  • Bacterial leaf blight of rice, caused by the bacterium Xanthomonas oryzae (Uyeda & Ishiyama) Dowson.[3]
  • Early blight of potato and tomato, caused by species of the ubiquitous fungal genus Alternaria
  • Rubber leaf blight

On leaf tissue, symptoms of blight are characterized by the initial appearance of lesions which rapidly engulf surrounding tissue. However, lesions of diseases that cause leaf spots may, in advanced stages, expand to kill entire areas of leaf tissue and thus exhibit blight symptoms.


  1. ^ Agrios, George N. Plant Pathology. 5th ed. Burlington, MA: Elsevier Academic Press, 2005.
  2. ^ Partridge, J.E. "Southern Corn Leaf Blight." 2003. 8 August 2006. http://nu-distance.unl.edu/homer/disease/agron/corn/CoSCLB.html
  3. ^ Oda, M., Sekizawa, Y., and Watanabe, T. 1966. "Phenazines as Disinfectants Against Bacterial Leaf Blight of the Rice Plant." Applied Microbiology 14(3):365-367.
 This plant disease article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../b/l/i/Blight.html"
Advanced Search
Included Web Search Engines


Safe Search

close

Top Matching Results

Occasionally Search.com will highlight specialized results that are based on the context of your query. Examples of specialized results include specific links to news, images, or video.

Top Matching Results may highlight information from other Search.com pages, content from the CNET Network of sites, or third party content. The listings are based purely on relevance. Search.com does not receive payment for listings in this section but our partners that provide this data may get paid for listing these products.

Sponsored Links

This section contains paid listings which have been purchased by companies that want to have their sites appear for specific search terms and related content. These listings are administered, sorted and maintained by a third party and are not endorsed by Search.com.

Search Results

Search.com sends your search query to several search engines at one time and integrates the results into one list which has been sorted by relevance using Search.com's proprietary algorithm. You can customize the list of search engines included in your metasearch from the preferences.

The search engines that are used in your metasearch may allow companies to pay to have their Web sites included within the results. To view the Paid Inclusion policy for a specific search engine, please visit their Web site. Search.com does not accept payment or share revenue with any search engine partner for listings in this section.