Meta-analysis (MA) is increasingly adopted in agricultural and ecological sciences, fields at the interface with plant pathology. Our review of the use of MA in the field since 1999 identified 79 original research papers. Fifty percent of these works were published in two American Phytopathological Society journals, emphasizing their central role in disseminating MA research.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRes Synth Methods
September 2024
Methods of network meta-analysis (NMA) can be classified as arm-based and contrast-based approaches. There are several arm-based approaches, and some of these have been criticized because they recover inter-study information and hence do not obey the principle of concurrent control. Here, we point out that recovery of inter-study information in arm-based NMA can be prevented by fitting a fixed main effect for studies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFConstructing models that accurately predict Fusarium head blight (FHB) epidemics and are also amenable to large-scale deployment is a challenging task. In the United States, the emphasis has been on simple logistic regression (LR) models, which are easy to implement but may suffer from lower accuracies when compared with more complicated, harder-to-deploy (over large geographies) model frameworks such as functional or boosted regressions. This article examined the plausibility of random forests (RFs) for the binary prediction of FHB epidemics as a possible mediation between model simplicity and complexity without sacrificing accuracy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFusarium head blight (FHB) of wheat, caused by the fungus , is associated with grain contamination with mycotoxins such as deoxynivalenol (DON). Although FHB is often positively correlated with DON, this relationship can break down under certain conditions. One possible explanation for this could be the conversion of DON to DON-3-glucoside (D3G), which is typically missed by common DON testing methods.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFusarium head blight (FHB), caused by the fungus , is associated with grain contamination with mycotoxins such as deoxynivalenol (DON) and zearalenone (ZEA). Unlike DON, less is known about factors affecting ZEA production during FHB epidemics. The objective of this study was to quantify ZEA contamination of wheat grain as influenced by temperature, relative humidity, FHB index (IND), grain maturation, simulated late-season rainfall, and harvest timing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNetwork meta-analysis is a popular method to synthesize the information obtained in a systematic review of studies (e.g., randomized clinical trials) involving subsets of multiple treatments of interest.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe impact of Gibberella ear rot (GER; caused by ) on deoxynivalenol (DON) contamination of grain and yield components in maize were investigated using data from 30 environments in Ohio (3 years by 10 locations). Fifteen hybrids, later classified as susceptible (SU), moderately susceptible (MS), or moderately resistant (MR), based on the magnitude of differences in mean arcsine square-root-transformed GER severity (arcSEV) and log-transformed DON (logDON) relative to a reference SU check, were planted in each environment, and 10 ears per hybrid were inoculated with a spore suspension of . Relationships between GER severity and DON were well described by a Kono-Sugino-type nonlinear equation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFField experiments were conducted to investigate the efficacy of fungicide treatments in combination with genetic resistance against Fusarium head blight (FHB) and its associated mycotoxins under persistently wet pre- and postanthesis conditions in plots inoculated with -colonized corn spawn. Treatments consisted of a single application of prothioconazole + tebuconazole at early anthesis (PA), or at 3 (P3), 6 (P6), or 9 (P9) days after early anthesis, or PA followed by a single application of metconazole at 3 (PA+C3), 6 (PA+C6), or 9 (PA+C9) days after early anthesis. PA and P3 were the most efficacious of the single-application treatments in terms of mean percentage control of FHB index (IND), deoxynivalenol (DON), zearalenone (ZEA), and mean increase in grain yield and test weight (TW) relative to the nontreated susceptible check (S_CK).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBecause Fusarium head blight (FHB) intensity is usually highly variable within a plot, the number of spikes rated for FHB index (IND) quantification must be considered when designing experiments. In addition, quantification of sources of IND heterogeneity is crucial for defining sampling protocols. Field experiments were conducted to quantify the variability of IND ("field severity") at different spatial scales and to investigate the effects of sample size on estimated plot-level mean IND and its accuracy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFModels were developed to quantify the risk of deoxynivalenol (DON) contamination of maize grain based on weather, cultural practices, hybrid resistance, and Gibberella ear rot (GER) intensity. Data on natural DON contamination of 15 to 16 hybrids and weather were collected from 10 Ohio locations over 4 years. Logistic regression with 10-fold cross-validation was used to develop models to predict the risk of DON ≥1 ppm.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe binary power law (BPL) is often used to characterize spatial heterogeneity of disease incidence. A hierarchical mixed model, coupled with multiple imputation to randomly generate any missing standard errors, was used to conduct a meta-analysis of >200 published values of the estimated aggregation () parameter of the BPL. Approximately 50% of estimated values ranged from 1.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEnsembling combines the predictions made by individual component base models with the goal of achieving a predictive accuracy that is better than that of any one of the constituent member models. Diversity among the base models in terms of predictions is a crucial criterion in ensembling. However, there are practical instances when the available base models produce highly correlated predictions, because they may have been developed within the same research group or may have been built from the same underlying algorithm.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEpidemics of wheat blast, caused the pathotype of , were studied in the Santa Cruz del la Sierra region of Bolivia to quantify and compare the temporal dynamics of the disease under different growing conditions. Six plots of a susceptible wheat cultivar were planted at Cuatro Cañadas (CC), Okinawa 1 (OK1), and Okinawa 2 (OK2) in 2015. Spike blast incidence (INC) and severity (SEV) and leaf blast severity (LEAF) were quantified in each plot at regular intervals on a 10 × 10 grid ( = 100 clusters of spikes), beginning at head emergence (Feekes growth stage 10.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe pathotype of (MoT) that causes wheat blast has not yet been reported in the U.S., but the closely related Lolium pathotype (MoL), also capable of inciting blast, is found in several wheat growing regions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSometimes plant pathologists assess disease intensity when they are primarily interested in other response variables, such as yield loss or toxin concentration in harvested products. In these situations, disease intensity potentially could be considered a surrogate of yield or toxin. A surrogate is a variable which can be used instead of the variable of interest in the evaluation of experimental treatments or in making predictions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnthesis is generally recommended as the optimum growth stage for applying a foliar fungicide to manage Fusarium head blight (FHB) and the Fusarium-associated toxin deoxynivalenol (DON) in wheat. However, because it is not always possible to treat fields at anthesis, studies were conducted to evaluate pre- and postanthesis treatment options for managing FHB and DON in spring and winter wheat. Network meta-analytical models were fitted to data from 19 years of fungicide trials, and log response ratio ([Formula: see text]) and approximate percent control ([Formula: see text]) relative to a nontreated check were estimated as measures of the effects of six treatments on FHB index (IND: mean percentage of diseased spikelets per spike) and DON.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNetwork meta-analysis can be implemented by using arm-based or contrast-based models. Here we focus on arm-based models and fit them using generalized linear mixed model procedures. Full maximum likelihood (ML) estimation leads to biased trial-by-treatment interaction variance estimates for heterogeneity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFStrawberry production in Florida and South Carolina is affected by two major diseases, anthracnose fruit rot (AFR) and Botrytis fruit rot (BFR), caused by Colletotrichum acutatum and Botrytis cinerea, respectively. The effective management of both diseases traditionally relied on weekly fungicide applications. However, to improve timing and reduce the number of fungicide sprays, many growers follow the Strawberry Advisory System (StAS), a decision support system for forecasting fungicide applications based on environmental conditions and previously developed models.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSudden oak death, caused by the invasive pathogen Phytophthora ramorum Werres, de Cock & Man in't Veld, can be deadly for Quercus agrifolia Neé (coast live oak, CLO). However, resistant trees have been observed in natural populations. The objective of this study was to examine if pre-attack (constitutive) levels of phenolic compounds can be used as biomarkers to identify trees likely to be resistant.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGrapevine red blotch-associated virus (GRBaV), the causative agent of red blotch disease, is a member of the genus Grablovirus, in the family Geminiviridae and the first known geminivirus of Vitis spp. Limited information is available on the epidemiology of red blotch disease. A 2-hectare Vitis vinifera cv.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInfection of plants with viruses containing multiple variants frequently leads to dominance by a few random variants in the systemically infected leaves (SLs), for which a plausible explanation is lacking. We show here that SL dominance by a given viral variant is adequately explained by its fortuitous lead in systemic spread, coupled with its resistance to superinfection by other variants. We analyzed the fate of a multi-variant turnip crinkle virus (TCV) population in Arabidopsis and N.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPhytopathology
September 2015
In agricultural research, it is often difficult to construct a single "best" predictive model based on data collected under field conditions. We studied the relative prediction performance of combining empirical linear models over the single best model in relation to number of models to be combined, number of variates in the models, magnitude of residual errors, and weighting schemes. Two scenarios were simulated: the modeler did or did not know the relative of performance of the models to be combined.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMeta-analysis of a set of clinical trials is usually conducted using a linear predictor with additive effects representing treatments and trials. Additivity is a strong assumption. In this paper, we consider models for two or more treatments that involve multiplicative terms for interaction between treatment and trial.
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