WITHDRAWN: Designing Experiments to Asses the Space-Time Dynamics of Plant Diseases

• Author(s): Rob Deardon and Daria Martchenko and Paul McNicholas
• Keywords: infectious disease models ; experimental design ; crop trials

Abstract

Infectious diseases of crops, and other plants, can cause havoc both economically and environmentally. In order to control such disease it is desirable to understand the dynamics, which are generally spatio-temporal in nature, of the disease spread. In some situations experiments may be carried out to assess such dynamics. However, little work has been done exploring how best to design such experiments. Here we show the results from a number of simulation studies to help answer questions about how to best design such experiments in terms of their spatial layout, and consider the temporal resolution over which such spatial data needs to be collected in order to understand the spatio-temporal dynamics of the disease spread.