Indian Horticulture Journal

In the modern, intensified agriculture, the efficient management of plant diseases is essential. At present the most reliable means of doing this is by the use of fungicides. Fungicides are the toxic substances which either kill or check the growth of the fungi. During the last two decades, fungicide research has produced a diverse range of fungicidal products with novel modes of action which had a significant impact on plant disease control. The need for new and innovative fungicides is driven, among other factors, by resistance management, regulatory hurdles, and increasing customer expectations. Compounds having a novel mode of action are of course of special interest, since they play a key role in resistance management strategies, but equally important are new fungicides with enhanced characteristics such as systemicity, curativity, and longevity of disease control. The technical feature of new generation fungicides are target specific action and safer to non target sites. Over the past few years, however, several truly novel compounds have been launched commercially and have reached an advanced stage of development, which include phenylpyrroles, anilinopyrimidines, strobilurin analogues etc with effects on respiration, cell membrane components, protein synthesis, signal transduction and cell mitosis. Many of the important plant diseases, which were not controlled satisfactorily by the previous traditional fungicides, can now be well managed by the new compounds which are mostly systemic in nature. In view the risk of resistance development with most of the systemic, site specific compounds, there is a need to develop more classes of fungicide with novel target sites.