• Question: Do the plants have similar diseases like us humans and how do you cure them because you cannot give them any medicine?

    Asked by to James, Jennifer, Kim, Liam, Ricardo on 19 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Ricardo Ramirez

      Ricardo Ramirez answered on 19 Jun 2014:

      They do get sick, they get infections from virus, bacteria, parasites (insects, worms). There are some fungicides, insecticides and herbicides! Which kill fungi, insects and other plants competing for the nutrients in the field. However, vaccines doesn’t work with plants, as they don’t have the same defences that we do (when you get a vaccine, you fool your body to think it got the virus, and learns how to defend against it, so you are prepared when you get it!).
      We don’t give the same medicine than for humans, because the diseases of plants are different to ours. I hope I never find a grasshopper eating me alive!

    • Photo: Jennifer Stephens

      Jennifer Stephens answered on 24 Jun 2014:

      Hi 12sarsat
      Plants get lots of diseases and sometimes we can use fungicides, bactericides and insecticides to kill the disease symptoms – just like giving the plant medicine – but there are many diseases that we can’t cure. In the last 100 years there have been two epidemics of Dutch Elm Disease where millions of trees caught the disease and had to be cut down. This disease is caused by a fungi and transferred from tree to tree by the elm bark beetle.

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