Abstract
Rust fungi belong to the Uredinales, a highly specialized order of the Basidiomycetes. In common with mushrooms they have spores of the sexual stage borne in fours on a club-shaped hypha known as a basidium, but apart from this they differ very decidedly from woody and fleshy Basidiomycetes. The term rust is applied both to the pathogen and to the disease it inflicts. There are more than 4000 species of rusts, all obligate parasites on ferns or seed plants. Many are heteroecious, completing their life cycle on two different kinds of plants; but some are autoecious (monoecious), having all spore forms on a single host species. There are only two families, Melampsoraceae and Pucciniaceae.
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© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Horst, R.K. (2013). Rusts. In: Westcott's Plant Disease Handbook. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2141-8_42
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2141-8_42
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Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-2140-1
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-2141-8
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