Ecology and Management of the Top 3 Economically Important Plant Parasitic Nematodes: Root-knot (Meloidogyne spp.) Cyst (Heterodera spp. and Globodera spp.) and Root Lesion (Pratylenchus spp.) Nematodes.

Nematodes are the most numerous multicellular animals on earth, comprising an extremely species-rich phylum with estimations spanning 25,000 to 1 million species worldwide (Zhang, 2013; Singh and Phulera 2015). Despite representing only 15% of described nematode species (Singh and Phulera 2015), plant parasitic nematodes (PPN) are the subject of the majority of nematological research due to the immense economic loss they cause (Pulavarty et al., 2021). Around 4,100 species of PPN have been identified as a serious constraint for global food security, causing annual losses estimated at around $80 billion per year in the US (Nicol et al., 2011) and $300 million from yield loss alone in Europe (Atkins et al., 2003). A meta-analysis ranking PPN genera according to their scientific and economic importance placed the root-knot (Meloidogyne spp.) the cyst (jointly Heterodera spp. and Globodera spp.) and lesion (Pratylenchus spp.) nematodes as first, second and third respectively (Jones et al., 2013) a ranking that has since been accepted and echoed by others (Fourie, Ahuja, Lammers and Daneel, 2016; Fleming, McGowan, Maule and Fleming, 2016; Pulavarty et al., 2021; Moens, Perry and Jones, 2018). […]