National Predictive Model Developed for Crop Disease

Dr. Damon Mason professor and extension specialist in the Department of Pathology at the University of Wisconsin- Madison is heading the development of the National Predictive Model, which is a mathematical formula that explains a biological process.

“Or fundamentally, what we're actually doing is we're taking weather information. So we spent a lot of time thinking about the disease triangle, which plant pathologists are very, very, they love the disease triangle. And what that disease triangle says is you need whether you need to susceptible hosts, and then you need virulent pathogens. And those all have to come together at the same time to cause disease. And so what we're doing is we're very interested in the weather parameter, that disease triangle. So if your weather is not conducive, you break the triangle, right? And you don't have disease. If the weather is conducive, then the triangle is met. And you do have disease.”

Dr. Mason says the goal is to have one central location for data and information.

“The vision is to eventually have a dashboard, a common place where we can go for all of those crops, because we know farmers, you know, for instance, here in the Midwest, you know, a lot of farmers have corn and soybeans and maybe even some small grains and rotation there, right? So it'd be nice to be able to go to one dashboard and get information on all of those crops and the particular diseases that might be you know, affecting those crops at the same time.”

With that dashboard being in the form of an app.