No abstract

Septoria tritici blotch (STB), caused by the ascomycete pathogenZymoseptoria tritici, is the most economically destructive disease of winter wheat throughout northern Europe (O'Driscoll et al., 2014).Following infection and a prolonged latent period, leaf necrosis is induced, with ensuing lesions that develop on the upper canopy during grain fill, leading to significant yield losses (Jørgensen et al., 2021). To prevent these losses, disease control programmes incorporating agronomic practices (e.g., delayed sowing), host resistance,

Potato late blight remains the most significant disease threat of potato cultivation globally, often requiring expensive, time-consuming and environmentally unfriendly approaches to disease management. The goal of this research was to evaluate whether an estimation of potato late blight risk based on environmental factors can be reliably used to adjust the standard potato late blight management practices and the role of cultivar resistance under growing conditions and contemporary Phytophthora infestans populations in the Republic of Ireland. Using the modified Irish Rules model, it was possible to reduce fungicide usage by 58.7% on average, compared to current standard practices used by growers and without adversely compromising disease control and yield, with similar results achieved by the half dose programme. Host resistance levels were found to be correlated with a delay in the initiation of the epidemics, final foliar disease levels and reduction of fungicide usage. Disease levels on the highly resistant cultivars remained low and a clear selection pattern towards the P. infestans genotypes EU_13_A2 and EU_6_A1 was observed. An increase in the frequency of strains belonging to genotypes EU_13_A2 and EU_6_A1 was also observed to occur in the latter part of the trial growing seasons. Due to the increasingly dynamic nature of the population structure, associated with the continued evolution of the P. infestans population and the arrival of EU_36_A2 in the Republic of Ireland, routine population monitoring is required to ensure that potato late blight control strategies remain effective.

Potato late blight caused by Phytophthora infestans is one of the most important plant diseases known, requiring high pesticide inputs to prevent disease occurrence. The disease development is highly dependent on weather conditions, and as such, several forecasting schemes have been developed worldwide which seek to reduce the inputs required to control the disease. The Irish Rules, developed in the 1950s and calibrated to accommodate the meteorological network, the characteristics of potato production and the P. infestans population at the time, is still operationally utilized by the national meteorological agency, Met Éireann. However, numerous changes in the composition and dynamics of the pathosystem and the risks of production/economic consequences associated with potato late blight outbreaks have occurred since the inception of the Irish Rules model. Additionally, model and decision thresholds appear to have been selected ad hoc and without a clear criteria. We developed a systematic methodology to evaluate the model using the empirical receiver operating curve (ROC) analysis and the response surface methodology for the interpretation of the results. The methodology, written in the R language, is provided as an open, accessible and reproducible platform to facilitate the ongoing seasonal re-evaluation of the Irish Rules and corresponding decision thresholds. Following this initial analysis, based on the available data, we recommend the reduction of the thresholds for relative humidity and an initial period duration from 90% and 12 h to 88% and 10 h, respectively. Contrary to recent reports, we found that the risk of blight epidemics remains low at temperatures below 12 °C. With the availability of more comprehensive outbreak data and with greater insight into the founder population to confirm our findings as robust, the temperature threshold in the model could potentially be increased from 10 °C to 12 °C, providing more opportunities for reductions of pesticide usage. We propose a dynamic operational decision threshold between four and 11 effective blight hours (EBH) set according to frequency of the disease outbreaks in the region of interest. Although the risk estimation according to the new model calibrations is higher, estimated chemical inputs, on average, are lower than the usual grower’s practice. Importantly, the research outlined here provides a robust and reproducible methodological approach to evaluate a semi-empirical plant disease forecasting model.