User:Dr. Milton Schroth
He acknowledges that his discoveries are in part related to inputs of his Berkeley colleagues, his students, and post-docs.
Dr. Schroth created a website https://www.plantdiseases.org/ to provide images and data of the world’s most important bacterial plant diseases. The search features are designed to assist teachers, scientists, farm advisors and backyard gardeners in diagnosis and disease management. It is applicable for computers, smart phones and other devices that allow data to be viewed almost anywhere in the world. We present over 1,000 images with characteristic symptoms and captions that include pathogen name, common and scientific names of the host and disease. When possible, multiple images are provided to show various stages of symptom expression as the disease progresses. Thirty-five narratives present an overview of the ecology and pathogenic properties of some major types of plant diseases such as galls, rots, wilts, fasciations, and scabs.
Not all bacterial diseases are included either because images no longer existed or a provider could not be located. Some images were imperfect due to problems common to old slides but the images were nevertheless included when no others were available. It is not possible to keep up with the taxonomy of bacteria past 2010 as taxonomists often alter names based on new information It is our hope that future efforts will expand the coverage of bacterial diseases with images of new and recently described diseases and/or improve resolution and quality of some images which were previously unavailable.
All contributors have signed copyright release forms or permissions and the images are now “free open access“, courtesy of the American Phytopathological Society (APS). Free open access is important to the dissemination of scientific information and we hope that scientific organizations will follow our practice. Land grant universities throughout the states with their experiment stations have always been outstanding in providing needed information and are a good source for additional specific information to complement our website.