Around 1% of angiosperms are parasitic plants. Their growth and development solely or partly depend on host plants from which they extract water, nutrients, and other molecules using a parasitic plant-specific organ, the haustorium. Strong depletion of nutrients can result in serious growth retardation and in some cases, death of the hosts. The genus Cuscuta (dodder) comprises about 200 holopar...

Potato spindle tuber viroid (PSTVd) is an infectious small, circular, non-coding single-stranded RNA that induces disease on many crop species, ornamental plants, weeds and parasitic plants. PSTVd propagate in their host as a population of closely related but non-identical RNA variants referred to as quasispecies. Recently, we have described three de novo arising PSTVd variants in the parasitic...

Many developing countries including Cameroon have mortality patterns that reflect high levels of infectious diseases and the risk of death during pregnancy and childbirth, in addition to cancers, cardiovascular diseases and chronic respiratory diseases that account for most deaths in the developed world. Several medicinal plants are used traditionally for their treatment. In this review, plants...

The indirect effects of hosts on interactions between parasites and other species are not well understood, and it may be difficult to predict the outcome of host species effects on parasite performance due to the complexity of potential direct and indirect effects. For example, parasitic plants obtain defensive compounds as well as nutrients from their hosts, and thus many attributes of parasit...

Few Aphelenchoides spp. are facultative plant-parasites (foliar and bulb nematodes); three of them are well known in agricultural systems, namely Aphelenchoides besseyi, A. fragariae and A. ritzemabosi. Ten other plant-parasitic species, A. arachidis, A. bicaudatus, A. blastophthorus, A. dalianensis, A. ensete, A. nechaleos, A. paranechaleos, A. saprophilus, A. sphaerocephalus and A. subtenuis,...

Cysteine proteinases from the fruit and latex of plants, such as papaya, pineapple and fig, have previously been shown to have substantial anthelmintic efficacy, in vitro and in vivo, against a range of animal parasitic nematodes. In this paper, we describe the in vitro effects of these plant extracts against 2 sedentary plant parasitic nematodes of the genera Meloidogyne and Globodera. All the...

Witchweeds (Striga spp.) and broomrapes (Orobanche and Phelipanche spp.) are the two most devastating root parasitic plants belonging to the family Orobanchaceae and are causing enormous crop losses throughout the world. Seeds of these root parasites will not germinate unless they are exposed to chemical stimuli, 'germination stimulants' produced by and released from plant roots. Most of the ge...

This study is a contribution to the inventory of medicinal plants and other methods used in controlling external parasitic diseases of backyard poultry in the localities of Djougou and Ouaké (department of Donga, Benin). It consists of a survey undertaken from December 2010 to March 2011 through visits and interviews with 210 poultry famers. The results indicate that 13 species of medicinal pla...

Strigolactones are a new class of plant hormones emerging as important signals in the control of plant architecture. In addition, they are key elements in plant communication with several rhizosphere organisms. Strigolactones are exuded into the soil, where they act as host detection signals for arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi, but also as germination stimulants for root parasitic plant seeds...