Modelling plant diseases for decision making in crop protection

Vittorio Rossi, Simona Giosue', Tito Caffi

Risultato della ricerca: Contributo in libroChapter

36 Citazioni (Scopus)

Abstract

A plant disease model is a simplification of the relationships (between a patho-gen, a host plant, and the environment) that determine whether and how an epi-demic develops over time and space. This chapter describes an approach for de-veloping mechanistic, weather-driven, dynamic models which are suitable to be applied in precision crop protection. Model building consists of four steps: (I) defi-nition of the model purpose; (II) conceptualization; (III) development of the mathe-matical relationships; and (IV) model evaluation. Conceptualization is based on systems analysis; it assumes that the state of the pathosystem can be quantitatively determined and that changes in the system can be described by mathematical equations. A conceptual model describes the system (both conceptually and mathematically), and a set of driving models accounts for changes caused by the external variables. Two main types of conceptual models are described: plant- and pathogen-focused models. Model evaluation is the judgement of the overall adequacy of the model, which includes: verification, validation, uncertainty analysis, sensitivity analysis, and judgement of utility. Finally, the chapter briefly considers how models can be used as tools for decision making at different scales of time and space: from warning services to precision agriculture.
Lingua originaleEnglish
Titolo della pubblicazione ospitePrecision Crop Protection - The Challenge and Use of Heterogeneity
EditorR. Gerhards, E.C. Oerke, G. Menz, R.A. Sikora
Pagine241-258
Numero di pagine18
DOI
Stato di pubblicazionePubblicato - 2010

Keywords

  • decision making
  • mechanistic modelling
  • plant diseases

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