Dynamics of Pathogenic Fungi in Field Hedges: Vegetation Cover Is Differentially Impacted by Weather.

Pauline Dentika,Laurent Penet,Harry Ozier-Lafontaine

doi:10.3390/microorganisms10020400

Abstract

Landscape effects might impede or increase spore dispersal and disease risk for crops, as trees and hedges buffer winds and can behave as spore traps, therefore limiting diffusion of fungi, or, on the contrary, behave as disease relay once vegetation is infected and become inoculum sources. In this study, we investigated weekly prevalence of the pathogenic fungus Colletotrichum gloeosporioides on guava tree leaves, differentiating impacts of leaf height on tree, age, and location within leaf. We first estimated differences in prevalence for each covariate, and then related infection rates to weather effects during the year. Our results highlighted a great variance of prevalence among individual trees, and a lower contamination of tree tops, as well as a tendency for greater odds of infection in tips of young leaves compared to older ones. Last, we show evidence that individual tree contaminations are associated with different disease dynamics: early and dispersal-based, late and growth-based, as well as with intermediate dynamic ranges. Pathogen infection dynamics will thus be greatly impacted by cover characteristics at local scale, and tree cover should not be perceived as homogeneously driving disease levels.

Highlights

Crop diseases are a major limitation of food production [1], and while previous decades relied heavily on chemical control of pathogens and antagonists [2], transition toward more sustainable food production will require designing new control practices and pathogen attenuation strategies
We aimed to address how local tree factors would interact in terms of fungus prevalence, and investigated the impact of leaf age [29,30,31] and leaf location on tree, and since guava trees have drip tip leaves susceptible to top-down contamination by spore leaching during rains [32,33], we assessed differences in prevalence in three leaf areas
Estimated prevalence mostly did not differ among categories, except for a huge variation between individual trees, and top of trees being significantly less inoculated than the other parts of trees (Figure 1), and prevalence was marginally significant and greater for young leaf tips

Summary

Introduction

Crop diseases are a major limitation of food production [1], and while previous decades relied heavily on chemical control of pathogens and antagonists [2], transition toward more sustainable food production will require designing new control practices and pathogen attenuation strategies. Higher level effects of landscape pertain to diffusion of crop antagonists (barrier effect) [16], while local effects will have more demographic-based impacts, depending on whether they can significantly decrease or increase antagonist populations (host skill) [17]. Both consequences may have complex relationships, as potential increase in demography may not necessarily increase disease or pest damage risk homogenously in the neighboring fields [18], especially since dispersal is usually strongly affected by barrier effects. These effects will depend on the nature of antagonists, as crop pests

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