Besides field and vegetable crops, nematodes damage fruit trees, forest trees, lawns, golf courses, ornamental flowers, shrubs, and home garden plants. It is impossible to determine the economic benefits of controlling nematodes on these plants, but estimates are in the billions of dollars.
What is a negative effect of a nematode?
No matter where they feed, these tiny worms can seriously damage to crops with their sharply pointed mouths by puncturing cell walls. The real damage occurs when a nematode injects saliva into a cell from its mouth and then sucks out the cell contents.
How does nematodes affect the environment?
Nematodes enhance soil quality in four major areas: regulate the populations of other soil organisms, mineralize nutrients into plant-available forms, provide a food source for other soil organisms and consume disease-causing organisms. Nematodes are important nutrient mineralizers.
How do nematodes cause harm to plants?
These nematodes cause massive plant tissue necrosis because of their migration and feeding. When they feed from the plant, they simply suck out the plant cell cytoplasm using their stylet, killing the plant cell and moving ahead of the lesion. They make no permanent feeding cells.
How does nematodes cause harm to plants & animals?
They move through the root, piercing cells, extracting cell contents, and leaving behind a trail of both cell-killing metabolites and eggs. Root cell death results in browning and lesioning of the roots. These lesions can rapidly coalesce, resulting in browning of whole roots.
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