Background: This study determined the incidence, severity and distribution of fungal pathogens associated with cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz) causing brown leaf spot (BLS) disease during the 2021-2023 cropping seasons in five communities each from Sunyani municipality, Sunyani west municipality and Dormaa east district of Bono Region, Ghana. 
 
Methods: During the survey, incidence and severity of BLS were observed in cassava fields across the fifteen communities using a purposive sampling method in the dry and rainy seasons. A simple random method was employed to sample 135 infected cassava plants showing symptoms of BLS for isolation and purification of the putative pathogen. The study subsequently validated Koch&rsquo;s postulates. 
 
Result: A total of 898 pathogenic fungal isolates were extracted and identified as belonging to 15 genera, with two fungal pathogens, belonging to the genera Colletotrichum and Lasiodiplodia spp., identified as the causative agents of BLS with relative prevalence of 40% and 31.68%, respectively. The rainy season had a significantly higher incidence of BLS (76.87%) than the dry season (18.40%). The rainy season also had a significantly higher severity score (63.02) than the dry season (43.3). The damage index in Sunyani west municipality and Dormaa east district was also significantly (P &lt; 0.001) different between the dry and rainy seasons. In the rainy season, more foliar damage occurred at an average of 71.9% than in the dry season, which recorded 8.0%.

Prevalence of Cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz) Brown Leaf Spot Disease in the Bono Region of Ghana and Association of Fungi with Leaf Spots

<div>Background: African marigolds an important medicinal and ornamental plant is grown throughout the world. The two spotted red spider mite,&nbsp;Tetranychus urticae is one of the most destructive pests of the crop. 
 
Methods: Estimation of various minerals and stress measures of T. urticae infested and non infested leaves was performed in two seasons namely summer and winter under both screen house and field conditions. ANOVA was analysed under two factorial Completely Randomized Design. Mite population per leaf was correlated with each biochemical measures and statistical significance of data was analyzed. 
 
Result: Significantly lower nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium content was recorded in infested (2.01, 0.307, 1.509% dry weight) leaves as compared to uninfested leaves (2.93, 0.387, 1.874% dry weight) respectively. Summer season reported higher per cent loss in mineral content as compared to the winter season. The content of total phenol and proline was significantly more in infested leaves (18.75 mg/g, 57.07 &micro;/100 g) as compared to the uninfested leaves (11.42 mg/g and 47.50 &micro;/100 g). The per cent increase of phenol and proline ranged from (43.90 and 20.81%) in summer and (42.90 and 17.45%) in winter, respectively.</div>

Biochemical Estimations of Tetranychus urticae Koch Infested Marigold Leaves in Summer and Winter Seasons under Screen House and Field Conditions

Spotted pod borer is one of the major biotic constraint for pulses production which can cause damage to the economic plant parts such as flower buds, flowers and pods. The larvae feeds on 39 host species of legume crops. The seasonal incidence of spotted pod borer differed from crop to crop and season to season. However, the peak incidence of larvae was observed at flowering and pod development stage in different pulse crops. Female moths lays flat scaly eggs on floral buds, flowers, leaves, leaf axils, terminal shoots and tender pods. Larvae are translucent with dark brown spots on each segment and larval period lasted from 11 to 21 days and the duration of total life cycle varied from 27 to 36 days on different hosts. The efficacy of chemical insecticides belonging to different groups against spotted pod borer was well established on different pulse crops. Neem products such as neem seed kernel extract (NSKE) or neem oil and biocides like Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) showed different levels of efficacy on different crops.

Incidence, bionomics and management of spotted pod borer [Maruca vitrata (Geyer)] in major pulse crops in India-A review

Background: Automatic feature extraction using convolutional neural networks has proven to be useful for a variety of computer vision tasks. Disease detection in plants is one such task that can be performed using convolutional neural network. Precise and timely disease detection in plants is crucial for better crop yield. So, state of the art technologies like convolutional neural network can help in developing efficient applications for this purpose. 
 
Methods: Here, we have performed an empirical study of five convolutional neural network architectures namely, VGG19, ResNet152V2, InceptionV3, MobileNetV2 and DenseNet201 for detecting diseases in tea leaves. Tea leaves affected with gray blight, red spot, brown blight, algal spot and helopeltis disease were used for the study. We have employed transfer learning models to address the issue of requiring a large number of data samples for training a convolutional neural network. The models were ranked based on their performances. We also proposed an enhanced DenseNet201 (E-DenseNet201) model by integrating channel attention module with DenseNet201 and compared its performance with the convolutional neural network architectures used here. 
 
Result: DenseNet201 demonstrated the highest performance among the five models with precision and recall value of 95.97% and 95.49% respectively. Further improvements were observed in the performance of E-DenseNet201 with precision and recall value of 98.15% and 97.5%.

E-DenseNet201: An Enhanced Method for Detecting Diseases in Tea Leaves

<div>Groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L.) is grown globally and it is affected by many widespread diseases and infestations in all the groundnut growing areas. &nbsp;In Eritrea, leaf spot diseases are prevalent that is caused by fungi (Passalora arachidicola and P. personata) and results great losses. Botanical pesticides play an important role to control fungal infections due to their non-phytotoxic and eco-friendly nature. This study intended to evaluate the efficacy of selected botanicals viz., Neem (Azadirachta indica), Melia (Melia azadirach), Lantana (Lantana camara), Datura (Datura metel) and Marigold (Tagetes patula) on plant height, intensity of leaf spots disease and yield of groundnut in Hamelmalo zoba, Eritrea, during 2017-2018. Extract of neem leaves (5.66, 14.10 and 25.38%) showed high significance in plant height after 20, 40 and 60 days, respectively, as compared to untreated control (21.07%) and mancozeb (treated control). The lowest disease intensity was recorded in the application of neem extract (15%w/v) at different days after sowing. However, mancozeb (2 g/liter) was the most effective and followed by Neem &gt; Melia &gt; Lantana showed improvement in plant growth and maximum reduction in disease intensity. The highest reduction rate in &lsquo;disease incidence&rsquo; and &lsquo;disease severity&rsquo; was found in Neem extract application (63.11 and 40.29) after mancozeb (56.52 and 36.18) at 95 DAS at 5% significant level. &nbsp;Among the botanicals, plants treated with Neem extract was observed with highest number of pods (89.45) and yield (98.10 q/ha) followed by Melia (5% w/v) i.e. 87.59 and 95.02 respectively.</div>

Evaluation of Botanicals to Manage Leaf Spots (Passalora arachidicola and Passalora personatum) of Groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L.) in Zoba Hamelmalo Region of Eritrea

<div>Background: The relative abundance and all year availability of Carica papaya necessitated this study and the availability of these leaves in almost all regions of the world. 
 
Methods: Air-dried and fresh Carica papaya leaves were collected for comparative analysis to investigate the proximate constituent, minerals, vitamins and presence of phytochemicals. The analyses were investigated in accordance with standard procedures.&nbsp; 
 
Result: The results of proximate showed that the fresh leaves contained higher level of crude fat, ash, crude fiber and crude protein when compared with the dry leaves. However, the dry leaves have higher percentages of calcium, sodium and phosphorus when compared with the fresh leaves. The fresh leaves shows higher levels of vitamins, (mg/100 g) ascorbic acid (C) 26.9, thiamine (B1) 0.62, riboflavin (B2) 0.69, however, the tocopherol (E) 48.195 content of the dry leaves was comparably higher. Phytochemical analysis revealed the presence of numerous bioactive compounds: saponin, phenol, terpene, oxalate, tannin, steroid, phytate and alkaloids. Thus, fresh pawpaw leaf gave a source of essential nutrients while dry pawpaw leaf was a source of calcium, sodium and phosphorus. Therefore, pawpaw leaves can be manipulated in the herbal treatment of various diseases and a potential source of useful elements for drugs formulation.</div>

Nutrient Evaluation and Phytochemical Analysis of Fresh and Dry Leaves of Carica papaya

<div>Background: Legume pod borer or spotted pod borer, Maruca vitrata is one of the serious insect pest to the green gram, which causes damage mainly at the reproductive phase of the crop growth. The larvae of spotted pod borer are known to cause damage by webbing the leaves, bud, flower and pods together and feed from inside on them. Due to its webbing nature, it is very difficult to enter inside by natural enemies and chemicals cannot directly reach inside webbing. Host plant resistance to insect pests is an economically and ecologically preferred alternative as compared to other pest management tactics, particularly the synthetic pesticides. The present investigation was undertaken to examine the role of certain bio-chemical constituents of the immature pods of green gram in the expression of damage by the spotted pod borer. 
 
Methods: The experiments on screening were conducted during the kharif 2014 and 2015 at the Agricultural Research Farm, Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, (U.P.) to define the occurrence of M. vitrata on 20 promising varieties/genotypes of green gram. Pods were collected at the immature stage from different varieties/genotypes and biochemical constituents such as total soluble sugar, total chlorophyll, protein were estimated. 
 
Result: The maximum protein content was found in genotype IPM 306-6 (36.17 mg/g) and minimum in genotype PM-5 (20.53 mg/g). Highest total sugar content was reported from genotype ML 1256 (16.71 mg/g) and lowest total sugar content was recorded in PM-5 (10.94 mg/g).The phenol content in genotype PM-5 (9.00 mg/g) was significantly higher than others whereas, the minimum phenol content was reported in IPM 306-6 (5.14 mg/g). The higher amount of total chlorophyll content found in genotype IPM 306-6 (3.22 mg/g) and lowest in PM-5 (1.85 mg/g). The significant and positive correlation was observed between M. vitrata larval population, pod damage and protein (r=0.954** and r=0.952**, respectively) and total sugar content (r=0.986** and r=0.986**, respectively) and total chlorophyll content (r=0.994** and r=0.993**, respectively) in immature pods, while, the significant and negative correlation was found between phenol (r= -0.916** and r= -0.919**, respectively).</div>

<div>Biochemical Factors Associated with Resistance to Spotted Pod Borer, Maruca vitrata (Fabricius) in Green Gram</div>

<div>Background: Early leaf spot caused by Cercospora arachidicola Hori. is most destructive disease in all the groundnut growing areas of Rajasthan, under severe infestation it cause 30-50% losses in pod yield. Recently, Central Insecticide Board (CIB), Faridabade banned 27 pesticides including some important fungicides which are extensively used in plant disease management. Therefore, in the present investigation, our main emphasis was to find out some new fungicides for management of early leaf spot disease. 
 
Methods: Ten fungicides (hexaconazole 5% EC, difenconazole 25% EC, propiconazole 25% EC, tebuconazole 25.9% EC, trifloxystrobin 25% + tebuconazole 50% WG, mancozeb 50% WP, chlorothalonil 75% WP, carbendazim 50% WP, carbendazim 12% + mancozeb 63% WP and captan 70% + hexaconazole 5% WP) were evaluated against early leaf spot pathogen (C. arachidicola) both in lab as well as in field condition. The experiment was conducted at ARS, SKRAU, Bikaner during Kharif-2019 on most popular cv. HNG-69 in RBD design with the application of foliar spray of ten different fungicides at different concentrations against early leaf spot disease and compared with an untreated control. 
 
Result: Among all the fungicides used in the present investigation, Tebuconazole 25.9% EC was found most effective in inhibiting the mycelial growth of the pathogen followed by trifloxystrobin 25% + tebuconazole 50% WG. Under field condition, it gave maximum (70.73%) disease control with highest pod yield (31.5 q/ha) and net return (Rs 57,500/ha) when applied as foliar spray at 0.1% concentration followed by trifloxystrobin 25% + tebuconazole 50% WG at 0.2%. These treatments can provide an effective and economical management of early leaf spot disease for groundnut cultivators.</div>

​Management of Early Leaf Spot (Cercospora arachidicola) of Groundnut in Rajasthan

<div>Background: Olive leaves are of great interest, especially in traditional medicine. The polyphenols contained in olive leaves play an important role in this respect, as they have anti-carcinogenic, anti-inflammatory and anti-microbial properties. Olive leaves share phenolic compounds with other plants, but they also contain phenolic compounds belonging to the Oleaceae family.&nbsp; 
 
Methods: We report the determination of phenolic compounds in olive leaves by HPLC and the evaluation of their in vitro activity against several microorganisms that may be causal agents of human intestinal and respiratory tract infections, Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus cereus, Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Klebsiella pneumonia, Enterobacter cloacae, Proteus mirabilis and Salmonella typhimurium. 
 
Result: The results reveal that the olive leaves may constitute a good source of antimicrobial agents. The high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analysis showed the presence of five phenolic compounds: oleuropein, ascorbic acid, rutin, catechinand verbascoside and for the first time ascorbic acid. At low concentrations, olive leaf extracts showed an unusual antibacterial action, which suggests their great potential as nutraceuticals, particularly as a source of phenolic compounds.</div>

Phenolic Compounds and Antimicrobial Activity of Olive (Olea europaea L.) Leaves

<div>Background: Groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L.) is the fourth most important oil seed crop in the world. The early and late spots are a foliage disease more common and more destructive of groundnut which cause severe yield losses up to 70% and reduces the quality of the pod and fodder. Recent efforts have targeted on developing resistant source against leaf spot disease which are helpful for discarding the hazardous toxic chemical compounds used for controlling the disease. The current study aimed to identify the sources of resistance to leaf spot from the newly identified genotypes as well as from wild species and to study the way in which these were responding to the to the disease development. 
&nbsp;</div>

<div>Methods: &nbsp;Seventy three groundnut genotypes were screened against late leaf spot disease under artificial epiphytotic conditions in field at AICRP on Groundnut, MPKV, Rahuri during kharif 2015-16. The observations of disease intensity and rate of infection were recorded. 
 
Result: Among the Seventy three groundnut genotypes, 10 genotypes showed resistant and 33 genotypes showed the moderately resistant reaction to leaf spot disease. The 25 entries showed the susceptible and 05 genotypes showed the highly susceptible reaction to the leaf spot disease. All the susceptible cultivars belong to A. hypogaea sub. sp. fastigiata var. fastigiata &nbsp;to as Spanish bunch. These 10 resistant genotypes of groundnut including two wild species viz., RHRG 6083, KDG 128, GPBD 4, ICGV 94118, ICGV 4983, &nbsp;ICG 12672, ICGV 13160 (A. batizocoi), ICGV 13165 (A. cardenasi), ICG 11426 and ICGV8193 were selected for intensive artificial screening under glasshouse conditions and also confirmed resistance. The resistant lines will be useful to develop introgression lines using marker-assisted backcrossing approach to improve foliar fungal disease resistance in popular groundnut varieties.</div>