„PHYTOMEDIZIN“ – CROP HEALTH is behind this German term

In GERMAN the nouns „Phyto (lat.)“ for plants and „medicine“ for health care address the science about keeping plants healthy. Hence, medicine ON plants.

Caution: The term is a „false friend“ in translation, because in ENGLISH Phytomedicine has a different meaning. Phytomedicine addresses the medicine WITH plants, best translated into GERMAN as medicine based on plants.

Crop Health best translates „Phytomedizin into English. Crop health, since major focus is on crop stands of whole fields rather than single plants.

Phytomedizin or Crop Health - what is in this box?
The focus is on crops which do not perform because of massively increased occurrences of viruses, bacteria, fungi, plants, animals. Tasks are to clarify the backgrounds in combination with investigating reasons and control options. How do they damage? Why do mass rearing occur? Can we react with preventive, biological, physical and chemical control? Detecting developments early and reliable, helps to schedule targeted control options. However, we can never completely restrict control to targets, hence, side effects on non-target organisms and the abiotic environment must be known and reduced as much as possible. Enabling a rational and prospective handling is another field of activities, since damaging organisms will never disappear completely. Through these tasks, Crop Health includes scientific aspects of biology, chemistry, economy and agricultural neighbour disciplines like soil science, crop science, breeding and plant nutrition. Various scales complete the picture: agroecosystems (from plant cell to crop stands) in space (landscape) and time (sequences of crops) embedded into economic systems (farms) und production chains up to the consumer.

To summarise: Crop Health offers exciting exercises in research and teaching!

• Genetic diversity in weed and pathogen populations
• Diagnosis of soil borne pathogens
• Weeds in crops and cropping systems
• Weed seed predation
• Modelling weed population dynamics
• Weed seed survival in the biogas production chain
• Agrobiodiversity and crop health
• Decision strategies in crop protection
• Herbicide resistance