Hi Mike - first I'd pick a vegetable that interests you - cucumber, carrot, beans, corn, lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, etc. and then Goole the diseases for that plant. Link below is a good start.

Or if you want to do one that can affect several different vegetables you can search by vege family name ie: cucurbits, crucifer, legumes, etc.

Good luck with your paper. :)

Dave

Here is a link that might be useful: NCSU Plant Disease Info

You will probably find a lot of information on powdery mildew. It's a common name applied to a large number of fungal pathogens. Due to the common name referencing a wide variety of fungal organisms with similar symptoms as well as the number of crops affected by it I think you may have an easier time fulfilling class requirements than picking a more esoteric pathogen.

Let us know if you have more specific questions.

Tomatoes are susceptible to many diseases. Many cultivars have been bred for resistance or tolerance to two, three or four of the following diseases:

*Verticillium wilt
*Nematodes
*Fusarium Wilt
*Fusarium, races 1 & 2
*Alternaria stem canker
*Tobacco mosaic virus-resistant
*Stemphyllium

Other serious tomato diseases have not been combatted by breeding and must be fought annually by the grower using various methods. Two of the most common, which plague home growers are:

*Early blight
*Septoria leaf spot

These, along with other foliage diseases, represent perhaps the most difficult to solve problems in tomato growing.

Jim

Perhaps you might want to identify when the disease first appeared in this country and where. It is one thing to know there is a disease, but is the disease mutating into new strains and what are the usual and what are the newer treatments for a given disease.