Integrated Disease Management in Fruit and Vegetable Crops

Dear Colleagues,

Fruit and vegetable crops are highly diverse and are grown in a range of different production systems that include both field and protected culture. These crops are affected by a variety of fungal, oomycete, viral, bacterial, and nematode diseases that threaten the economic viability of their production and utilization. Disease management in fruit and vegetable crops is particularly challenging due to the diversity of production systems, the lack of characterized host resistance in many species, the prevalence of fungicide and bactericide resistance, and - in many cases - the near-zero tolerance for disease symptoms to maintain blemish-free produce appearance for commercial markets. Often arthropod vector management must be considered as well, such as for certain bacterial and most viral diseases. These challenges can be overcome only by using integrated management approaches that combine multiple practices across the prevention, avoidance, monitoring, and suppression continuum of disease management tactics. 

This Special Issue provides a forum for research articles, reviews, short notes, and opinion articles that address application of one or more of the following tactics to disease management in fruit and vegetable crops: sampling and monitoring, disease forecasting or threshold-based applications, qualitative or quantitative host resistance, reduced-risk agrichemicals, methyl-bromide alternatives, cultural or physical practices, biological control or biotechnological approaches, and consideration of non-target or environmental effects, among others. All manuscripts will be judged based on scientific merit and quality of presentation. The editorial board will provide authors with a rapid and helpful peer review, and the open-access format of Horticulturae ensures rapid publication of accepted articles, excellent author services, broad readership, and high impact (IF = 2.331, Q1 among Horticulture journals). 

Prof. Dr. Harald Scherm
Dr. Cheng-Fang Hong
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Horticulturae is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• integrated disease management
• disease monitoring
• disease forecasting
• disease thresholds
• host resistance
• chemical control
• physical control
• cultural control
• biological control