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William E. Fry, Professor of Plant Pathology, 5 7863, wef1@cornell.edu

Models in potato pest management

Plant diseases can be devastating in agriculture, and this is particularly true for potato diseases.  The plant disease (late blight) that caused the Irish Potato Famine of the mid 19th-century is still a serious concern and much fungicide (more than 2000 tons in 2001 in the USA alone) is used to prevent the disease.  Weather is a major factor in determining the severity of disease. 

A model has been constructed that can describe disease development as a function of weather, host resistance and fungicide.  The model has been demonstrated to be accurate in potato production areas around the world.  This model could be used by practitioners to aid decision making and thereby decrease the amount fungicide used to prevent potato late blight.   However, the disease model has not yet been made “accessible” to persons who would use it on a regular basis. 

The goal of this project is to construct a user interface that will combine the disease model and a fungicide model with weather data available from a weather service, so that a user can readily use forecasted weather to predict future disease development and then decide if a particular fungicide application will be necessary or unnecessary.  A successful interface will enable a non-expert to use the models very flexibly to answer a series of questions that a practitioner might devise.  Answers to these questions would lead to increased efficiency of fungicide (decreased usage) in potato production. 

A few such questions are: 

• Given tomorrow’s weather forecast, will the disease increase?  (How much?)
• Given a slight modification (user's choice) of tomorrow’s weather forecast, what is the effect on disease?
• If a fungicide is applied in three days instead of today, what will be the influence on disease development?