Precision Plant Pathology: A New Approach to the Study of Epidemiology and Diagnosis of Plant Diseases

A special issue of Agriculture (ISSN 2077-0472). This special issue belongs to the section "Digital Agriculture".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (10 April 2024) | Viewed by 2174

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
1. Excellence Unit ‘María de Maeztu’ 2020-23, Department of Agronomy, Campus de Rabanales, University of Cordoba, 14071 Cordoba, Spain
2. Department of Agroforestry Sciences, ETSI University of Huelva, 21007 Huelva, Spain
Interests: integrated crop management; olive; verticillium; UAV; hyperspectral sensors; machine learning

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Guest Editor
Excellence Unit ‘María de Maeztu’ 2020-23, Department of Agronomy, Campus de Rabanales, University of Cordoba, 14071 Cordoba, Spain
Interests: olive; etiology; pathogenesis, epidemiology; control; Verticillium wilt

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Guest Editor
Department of Graphic Engineering and Geomatics, Campus de Rabanales, University of Cordoba, 14071 Córdoba, Spain
Interests: deep learning; open-source software; proximal sensing; logistic regression; multilayer perceptron; uncooled thermal sensor; precision agriculture; thermal orthomosaic

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The abundance of information available currently, as well as the ease of generating new information at a reasonable cost, is crucial for current digitization processes. New satellite constellations (Sentinel), cloud computing, low-cost sensors, Internet of Things, big data, and "machine learning" and artificial intelligence are expected to be fundamental in various disciplines of plant pathology and the decision making that will drive integrated pest management in the coming years. A pathosystem is represented by the "disease triangle"; that is, disease requires the interaction of a susceptible host, a virulent pathogen, and a favorable environment. Under these conditions, an epidemic may occur, defined as an increase in the disease over time, generating a multitude of available data. In this context, "Precision plant pathology" is a set of techniques aimed at optimizing the management of diseases based on the quantification of their spatial and temporal variability. These techniques seek to reduce costs and improve production and sustainability by creating risk prediction algorithms and models for the main diseases and adapting them to specific conditions. The four following areas of research are proposed: (1) visualization and statistical analysis of disease data using R and Python; (2) disease modeling using machine learning techniques and fuzzy logic; (3) automatic plant disease diagnosis using deep learning; and (4) remote and proximal sensing for early plant disease detection.

Dr. Antonio Santos-Rufo
Prof. Dr. Francisco Javier López-Escudero
Dr. Fernando Pérez Porras
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • R
  • Python
  • cloud computing
  • precision agriculture
  • remote sensing
  • smart sensors
  • multispectral, hyperspectral and thermographic sensors
  • vegetation index, NDVI
  • artificial intelligence
  • deep learning
  • fuzzy logic
  • prescription map
  • UAV/drone
  • big data

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

15 pages, 2387 KiB  
Article
Predicting the Risk of Verticillium Wilt in Olive Orchards Using Fuzzy Logic
by Francisco Javier López-Escudero, Joaquín Romero, Rocío Bocanegra-Caro and Antonio Santos-Rufo
Agriculture 2023, 13(11), 2136; https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture13112136 - 12 Nov 2023
Viewed by 1356
Abstract
Developing models to understand disease dynamics and predict the risk of disease outbreaks to facilitate decision making is an integral component of plant disease management. However, these models have not yet been developed for one of the most damaging diseases in Mediterranean olive-growing [...] Read more.
Developing models to understand disease dynamics and predict the risk of disease outbreaks to facilitate decision making is an integral component of plant disease management. However, these models have not yet been developed for one of the most damaging diseases in Mediterranean olive-growing areas (verticillium wilt (VW), caused by the fungus Verticillium dahliae Kleb.), although there are parameters (e.g., level of V. dahliae inoculum in the soil, level of susceptibility of the olive cultivar, isothermality, coefficient of variation of seasonal precipitation, etc.) that have previously been correlated with the severity of the disease. Using the data from previous VW studies conducted in the Guadalquivir Valley of Andalusia (one of the most damaged areas worldwide), in this work, a set of fuzzy logic (FL) models is developed with the aforementioned disease and climatic parameters, and the results are compared with machine learning (ML) models, of known effectiveness, to predict the risk levels of VW appearance in an olive orchard. Under these conditions, both groups of models were less effective than those previously studied with simpler models or models used under controlled conditions. However, the accuracy achieved with the most efficient FL model (60%; classification system based on fuzzy rules using the Ishibuchi method with a weighting factor) was somewhat greater than the efficiency achieved with the most efficient ML model (59.0%; decision tree classifier), in addition to being more appropriate (from a practical point of view) for the incorporation into a decision support system by allowing the risk of appearance of each observation to be known by providing rules for each of the combinations of the different parameters with similar precision. Therefore, in this study, we propose the FL methodology as suitable to act as an expert system for the future creation of a decision support system for VW in olives. Full article
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