Plant Pathology (2020) 69, 1630-1643

Selected publication you are invited to contribute to the discussion section (above tab)

Laetitia Willocquet, Serge Savary, Bruce A. McDonald and Alexey Mikaberidze (2020)
A polyetic modelling framework for plant disease emergence
Plant Pathology 69 (9), 1630-1643
Abstract: Plant disease emergences have dramatically increased recently as a result of global changes, especially with respect to trade, host genetic uniformity, and climate change. A better understanding of the conditions and processes determining epidemic outbreaks caused by the emergence of a new pathogen, or pathogen strain, is needed to develop strategies and inform decisions to manage emerging diseases. A polyetic process-based model is developed to analyse conditions of disease emergence. This model simulates polycyclic epidemics during successive growing seasons, the yield losses they cause, and the pathogen survival between growing seasons. This framework considers one immigrant strain coming in a single event into a system where a resident strain is already established. Outcomes are formulated as probability of emergence, time to emergence, and yield loss, resulting from deterministic and stochastic simulations. An analytical solution to determine a threshold for emergence is also derived. Analyses focus on the effects of two fitness parameters on emergence: the relative rate of reproduction (epidemic speed), and the relative rate of mortality (decay of population between seasons). Analyses revealed that stochasticity is a critical feature of disease emergence. The simulations suggest that: (a) emergence may require a series of independent immigration events before a successful invasion takes place; (b) an explosion in the population size of the new pathogen (or strain) may be preceded by many successive growing seasons of cryptic presence following an immigration event; and (c) survival between growing seasons is as important as reproduction during the growing season in determining disease emergence.
(The abstract is excluded from the Creative Commons licence and has been copied with permission by the publisher.)
Link to article at publishers website

Database assignments for author(s): Serge Savary, Alexey Mikaberidze

Research topic(s) for pests/diseases/weeds:
population dynamics/ epidemiology

---

Pest and/or beneficial records:

Beneficial	Pest/Disease/Weed	Crop/Product	Country	Quarant.