Plant Protection Science - Online first
Spray-induced gene silencing in the battle against pathogens, pests and weeds on our fields – soon reality or still a sci-fi?Review
Iveta Vachová, Jhonny Stalyn Hernández Orozco, Tereza Kalistová, Guy Smagghe, Martin Janda
Plant Protect. Sci., X:X | DOI: 10.17221/138/2025-PPS 
Agriculture faces ongoing challenges from pathogens, pests and weed threats that are amplified by climate change, intensive monoculture farming practices, and regulatory restrictions limiting traditional chemical treatments. To enhance resilience, innovative solutions are urgently needed. One promising strategy is RNA interference (RNAi), a natural mechanism for gene silencing. Among RNAi-based approaches, spray-induced gene silencing (SIGS) stands out for its ability to deliver double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) directly to eukaryotic organisms, modulating gene expression to suppress harmful species. Recent research demonstrates that appropriately designed...
Antimicrobial Compounds from Lactiplantibacillus plantarum and Lacticaseibacillus paracasei inhibited growth of Ralstonia syzygii subsp. celebesensis (RSC), causal pathogen of banana blood diseaseOriginal Paper
Michell Kah Ven Sam, Roslina Jawan, Nur Sulastri Jaffar, Khim Phin Chong
Plant Protect. Sci., X:X | DOI: 10.17221/67/2025-PPS
Banana blood disease is a banana wilt disease caused by Ralstonia syzygii subsp. celebesensis (RSC) poses a serious threat to banana plantations, particularly in Indonesia and Malaysia. Yet, the current control methods are inadequate to mitigate the disease. Biological control agents (BCAs) offer a promising solution by using beneficial microorganisms to control pathogens. Among BCAs, lactic acid bacteria (LAB) have gained increasing attention in agriculture due to their ability to produce a variety of antimicrobial compounds. This study investigates the antimicrobial substances produced by Lactiplantibacillus plantarum and...
Exploring the biocontrol efficiency of indigenous entomopathogenic fungus on Cadra cautella (Lepidoptera, Pyralidae) larvae in controlled laboratory conditionsOriginal Paper
Mureed Husain, Abdalsalam Omer Osman, Abdulrahman Saad Aldawood
Plant Protect. Sci., X:X | DOI: 10.17221/85/2025-PPS
Cadra cautella (Walker, 1863) is a global pest of agricultural stored commodities, particularly date fruits, in the field and storage. To reduce C. cautella populations in stored agricultural goods, it is recommended to use ecologically friendly methods rather than chemical treatments. In this regard, current research evaluated the efficacy of various indigenous strains of the entomopathogenic fungus Beauveria bassiana (Bals.-Criv.). Vuill. (1912), fungal isolates against C. cautella last-instar larvae under laboratory conditions. The last instar larvae were incubated in Petri plates with dry Beauveria bassiana inoculum...
From images to insights: Using a convolutional neural network to improve powdery mildew severity detection in mungbeanOriginal Paper
Pitchakon Papan, Witsarut Chueakhunthod, Chanwit Kaewkasi, Wanploy Jinagool, Akkawat Tharapreuksapong, Teerayoot Girdthai, Kanlayanee Sawangsalee, Piyada Alisha Tantasawat
Plant Protect. Sci., X:X | DOI: 10.17221/15/2025-PPS
To efficiently identify powdery mildew (PM) severity in mungbean leaves, we developed a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) approach and validated its effectiveness against human evaluation. We fine-tuned an EfficientNet-B3 pre-trained model, which, in our related studies, performed better than re-implemented Inception V3 models. The CNN was trained on 90% of the images (2 880) for training and 10% (320) for validation, with data augmentation applied using Python and TensorFlow. The model obtained 82.10% and 73.03% as training and validation accuracies after 14 epochs, respectively. Further analysis with an additional 15 datasets revealed PM disease...