A model framework for simulating plant disease epidemics

The Agricultural Production and Externalities Simulator (APES) is a modular simulation model system for estimating the biophysical behaviour of agricultural production systems in response to the interaction of weather, soil and agro-technical management options (APES, 2008). APES has been developed to allow the incorporation of other components which might be needed in order to simulate processes not yet included in the current version. Among these processes, plant diseases are interesting candidates because of their effects on crop yield and because of the implications as agro-chemicals use. A Diseases software component is currently under development adopting the design summarized by Donatelli and Rizzoli (2008). It aims at estimating the impacts of plant disease epidemics on plant growth and yield. It consists of four modules providing a generic frame to simulate disease development: 1) Disease progress, 2) Inoculum pressure (initial conditions), 3) Impacts on plants, and 4) Agricultural management impact on pathogen populations. The Disease progress module, developed as a generic model framework to simulate the epidemics caused by fungal pathogens, is briefly described herei