Biotic Stress is
stress that occurs as a result of damage done to plants by other living organisms, such as bacteria, viruses, fungi, parasites, beneficial and harmful insects, weeds, and cultivated or
native plants. Not to be confused with
abiotic stress, which is the negative impact of non-living factors on the organisms in a specific environment such as sunlight, wind, salinity, over watering and drought. The type of biotic stress will depend on geography, the host plant and its susceptibility to a particular stress, plant pathogens being the most common. Biotic stress remains a broadly defined term and faces many challenges in fully understanding its limits. This is partially due to the higher difficulty of controlling plant stresses during experiments, compared to abiotic.