Problem of Material and Process in the Phenomena of Phytoimmunity

Abstract

Hippocrates had already learned that the disease process includes not only the disease as such, i.e., the damage to the organism, but also the struggle of the organism for restoration of the norm. This position is fully admitted by contemporary doctrine regarding diseases, which, along with questions of etiology, attaches special significance to the problems of the mechanisms that control the internal environment and provide for the restoration of its normal state when it has been disturbed [Zdrodovskii, 1961]. The overwhelming role in the maintenance of the structural and functional unity of any organism belongs to immunity. Nevertheless, the definition of phytoimmunity as an expression of the norm of reaction characteristic of a higher plant to interference in its life activity by a heterotrophic organism, or, in other words, the statement that the higher plant can remain healthy only by means of an active reaction to the intrusion of a parasite, is controversial [Rubin and Artsikhovskaya, 1960]. Not only active but also passive immunity is considered in the phytopathological literature.