We use some essential cookies to make this website work.
We’d like to set additional cookies to understand how you use forestresearch.gov.uk, remember your settings and improve our services.
We also use cookies set by other sites to help us deliver content from their services.
Preparing to search
Phytophthora comes from the Greek for ‘plant destroyer’ and is one of the world’s most destructive genera of plant pathogens. Around 120 species of Phytophthora are now described, but some estimates suggest this may only be about a quarter of all Phytophthora species that exist worldwide but have yet to be discovered or named.
Probably the most famous species is Phytophthora infestans, which attacks the leaves and stems of potato plants and causes the disease that contributed to the potato famine in Ireland in the mid 1800s. Since the early 1990’s the profile of Phytophthoras in forests and natural ecosystems has risen markedly around the globe and Phytophthora diseases such as Sudden Oak Death and Phytophthora Dieback (sometimes also known as Jarrah dieback) are considered as some of the most destructive.
When introduced into new environments, often accidentally through plant trade, many Phytophthora species have proved to be damaging to a wide array of plants and trees through lack of co-evolved defence responses. Research on Phytophthora diseases of trees has been a key part of the work of Forest Research for many years.
Current research is funded by the Forestry Commission as part of the programmes on Understanding Threats to Resilience and Delivering Resilient Forests. Other funders include Defra, Research Councils, EU programmes including Horizon 2020 and COST Actions, and the USDA Forest Service.
Cookies are files saved on your phone, tablet or computer when you visit a website.
We use cookies to store information about how you use the dwi.gov.uk website, such as the pages you visit.
Find out more about cookies on forestresearch.gov.uk
We use 3 types of cookie. You can choose which cookies you're happy for us to use.
These essential cookies do things like remember your progress through a form. They always need to be on.
We use Google Analytics to measure how you use the website so we can improve it based on user needs. Google Analytics sets cookies that store anonymised information about: how you got to the site the pages you visit on forestresearch.gov.uk and how long you spend on each page what you click on while you're visiting the site
Some forestresearch.gov.uk pages may contain content from other sites, like YouTube or Flickr, which may set their own cookies. These sites are sometimes called ‘third party’ services. This tells us how many people are seeing the content and whether it’s useful.