Little things mean a lot: Working with Central American farmers to address the mystery of plant disease

Cornell University and Zamorano (ThePanamerican School of Agriculture) facilitatedworkshops that provided Honduran and Nicaraguanfarmers new experience with plant diseases and helpedfarmers assimilate information and identify diseasemanagement alternatives. After learning about thebiology of plant diseases, farmers were able toidentify disease problems in their field, enablingthem to use pesticides more selectively. Furthermore,participants of seven courses conceived 273 pathogen-specificmanagement alternatives, and they identifiedon average 66 percent of the common recommendations by plantpathologists for the control of general disease types.Many ideas were novel and may represent newopportunities for improving the practice of diseasemanagement.