Spores: Tulips with Fever, Rusty Coffee, Rotten Apples, Sad Oranges, Crazy Basil. Plant Diseases that Changed the World as Well as My Life

This book aims to describe, though in a quite light way, the social role of plant diseases, letting the reader know the topical importance of plant pathology, as well as the role of plant pathologists in our society. Plant diseases caused, in the past, significant economic losses, deaths, famine, wars, and migration. Some of them marked the history of entire countries. One example among many: the potato late blight in Ireland in 1845. Today plant diseases are still the cause of deaths, ofte...