A Risk Assessment Framework for Seed Degeneration: Informing an Integrated Seed Health Strategy for Vegetatively Propagated Crops

• DOI: 10.1094/phyto-09-16-0340-r
• Publication Date: 2017-05-26T02:03:02Z
• Authors: S. Thomas-Sharma; J. Andrade-Piedra; M. Carvajal Yepes; J. F. Hernandez N...; M. J. Jeger; R. A. C. Jones; P. Kromann; J. P. Legg; J. Yuen; G. A. Forbes; K. A. Garrett
• Keywords: Disease management; Seed treatment

Pathogen buildup in vegetative planting material, termed seed degeneration, is a major problem many low-income countries. When smallholder farmers use produced on-farm or acquired outside certified programs, it often infected. We introduce risk assessment framework for evaluating the relative performance of individual and combined components an integrated health strategy. The frequency distribution management outcomes was evaluated models incorporating biological environmental heterogeneity, with following results. (1) On-farm selection can perform as well seed, if rate success selecting healthy plants production high; (2) when choosing among within-season strategies, external inoculum determine usefulness 'incidence-altering management' (affecting proportion diseased plants/seeds) 'rate-altering disease transmission field); (3) under severe scenarios, where difficult to implement at high levels effectiveness, combining be synergistic keep degeneration below threshold; (4) also close yield gap between average worst-case scenarios. illustrate potential expert elicitation provide parameter estimates empirical data are unavailable. [Formula: see text] Copyright © 2017 Author(s). This open access article distributed CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license .