Question: Can plants get epidemics ?

Catherine Smith answered on 7 Nov 2018:

Yes. I’ve never studied them personally, but I know that they can be a big problem for crops. This is partly because large numbers of the same type of plant are grown close together. As the plants are often very similar genetically, if one plant is susceptible to disease, the rest are likely to be as well. If a disease spreads through a crop this can obviously have a big economic impact for the farmers growing them.