Research on Tobacco Plant Diseases in Korea : An Overview

Tobacco diseases have not been recorded until 1900s in Korea, where tobacco plants were introduced at early 1700s. Practical researches on the disease have been conducted since mid 1960s. Major ten tobacco diseases were mosaic caused by tobacco mosaic virus·potato virus Y·cucumber mosaic virus, bacterial wilt, hollow stalk, wild fire caused by angular leaf spot strain, black shank, brown spot, powdery mildew and fusarium wilt. But their annual occurrences were varied according to changes of tobacco varieties and their cultivating practices. As no useful chemicals, several biological tactics have been developed to control the viral or bacterial diseases that give significant economic damages on sustainable crop yield, but not practicable to field farming condition yet. Transgenic tobacco plants containing foreign disease resistant genes have been developed by current bio-technology, but not released to farmers yet. Though some disease-resistant tobacco varieties have been developed by the conventional breeding technology and currently used by farmers, their disease controlling efficacy have been diminished by occurrence of the new strain or race. Future research on tobacco diseases has been focused on technical development to produce high quality tobacco with less production cost, which leads Korean tobacco industry to keep its competence against foreign industry and decreasing overall market.

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