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New Mexico State University fungal plant pathology professor Soum Sanogo will begin the 2023 fall semester of his course “Diagnosing Plant Disorders” with a kick-off presentation at 1:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 18 in Sam Steel Café, room 150 of Gerald Thomas Hall on the NMSU campus.
That first gathering will cover disorders that affect three commodities of global economic importance: coffee, tea and cocoa, Sanogo said.
“The kick-off presentation in a coffee shop is aimed to provide a perspective to the students on the economic disruption should these commodities and others be severely affected by plant disorders,” said Sanogo, a professor in fungal plant pathology in NMSU’s Department of Entomology, Plant Pathology and Weed Science.
The course has three objectives, Sanogo said: 1) to describe the major types of plant disorders; 2) to identify the agents causing plant disorders; and 3) to define the approaches used in diagnosing plant disorders.
“Plant disorders can limit substantially the production of agricultural commodities, and they can affect the quality of urban and natural landscapes,” Sanogo said. “The ‘diagnosing plant disorders’ course aims to provide students with skillsets that will enable them to join the frontline workforce for the protection of food, agriculture, and urban and natural ecosystems.”
Coffee, tea and cocoa are tropical beverages grown mostly in the southern hemisphere, although most of the consumption takes place in the northern hemisphere, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Their sale and consumption generate hundreds of billions of dollars annually in the United States and around the world.
Online estimates of the value of each industry vary. MarketsandMarkets, based in India, said the recent global cocoa market was estimated to be about $21 billion and the global chocolate market almost $128 billion. According to Grand View Research, based in San Francisco, the global tea market was estimated at $12.6 billion in 2018. According to Expert Market Research, based in Wyoming, the global coffee market was at almost $126.4 billion in 2023.
Visit eppws.nmsu.edu.
