Epidemic invasion by newly introduced insects’ pests and pathogens pose serious threat to biodiversity, ecosystem function and human health worldwide, with socio-economic burden extensively larger than from natural disasters. Pathogens demonstrating long distance dispersal (LDD) are of more concern because of their ability to spread fast and remain cryptic (ability to stay asymptomatic for a certain period of time) as distant foci may have developed through surprisingly small concentrations of inoculum dispersed at larger spatial scales. I am conducting series of field studies to unlock the spatio-temporal spread and the efficacy of mitigation practices (e.g. timing and extent of fungicide applications and other broad-scale population protection) on epidemics caused by pathogens exhibiting long distance dispersal using wheat stripe rust as an experimental model. Results are validated using spatially explicit SIR models with model parameters relevant to wheat stripe rust.
Publication (Coming soon :smile:, Please check back later)