VIEW ARTICLE

Ecology and Epidemiology

Predicting the Rate of Development of Black Sigatoka (Mycosphaerella fijiensis var. difformis) Disease in Southern Taiwan. T. Y. Chuang, Associate professor, Department of Plant Pathology and Entomology, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan; M. J. Jeger, Associate professor, Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology, Texas Agricultural Experiment Station, College Station, Texas 77843, Present address: Tropical Development and Research Institute, London WC1X 8LU, United Kingdom. Phytopathology 77:1542-1547. Accepted for publication 7 May 1987. Copyright 1987 The American Phytopathological Society. DOI: 10.1094/Phyto-77-1542.

A multiple regression equation relating disease incidence, accumulated rainfall, and days of RH ? 90% to the rate of disease increase of banana leaf spot caused by Mycosphaerella fijiensis var. difformis was developed from 5 yr of field data in three locations of southern Taiwan. The model is y = 0.124 – 0.00489 Z₁ + 0.0000462 A₁ + 0.0000515 I₁₆, in which y is the relative rate of disease increase at any given time; Z₁ is disease incidence represented as percentage of leaf infected at the time of the previous assessment; A₁ is the square of Z₁; and I₁₆ is a composite variate, the product of P₄ and R₁, where P₄ is the accumulated precipitation in a 4-wk period and R₁ is the number of days with RH ? 90% in a 1-wk period before the calculated relative rate. The equation accounted for 76% of the total variation in relative rate and performed best at two of the three locations and in years where there was some fluctuation in rate. Model selection and validation were based on the use of different regression analysis techniques including Mallow’s C_p statistics, the variance inflation factor, and methods of data splitting.