Mechanistic atmospheric dispersal simulations in crop epidemiology to estimate risks for staple crop production from wind-borne transmission of crop diseases and insect pests

• Applicant: Dr. Marcel Meyer
• Subject Area: Plant Breeding and Plant Pathology ; Geodesy, Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing, Geoinformatics, Cartography
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 529743941

The global burden of crop diseases and insect pests on major food crops is estimated at 17-30% (Savary et al., 2019). Several of the most devastating crop diseases and insect pests can be transported by winds over extremely long distances; they cross regions, countries and even entire continents (e.g., Aylor, 2017). These low-probability but high-impact events can have severe consequences for agricultural production by causing epidemic outbreaks or insect pest infestations in previously uninfected areas. Whilst recent advances in meteorological modelling, remote sensing, and computational techniques allow for obtaining first quantitative estimates of wind-borne transmission risks that have recently been integrated into advanced real-time disease forecasting systems (e.g., Meyer et al, 2017a,b; Meyer, 2018; Visser et al., 2018; Allen-Sader et al., 2019), various open questions, challenges and uncertainties remain to be addressed for improving our understanding and capacity to predict risks for agricultural production posed by wind-borne transmission of crop diseases and insect pests. Key open questions evolve around the effect of complex interactions between meteorological drivers (e.g., wind, temperature) and biology of pathogens and insect pests (e.g., survival times, flight direction) on characteristic spatial and temporal dispersal scales, and around the integration of realistic atmospheric dispersal modelling components into epidemiological and crop modelling frameworks. The research proposed here addressed two key objectives: (i) review the literature and consult experts to obtain a parameterization of existing operational atmospheric transport models for a set of key wind-borne crop diseases and insect pests; (ii) continue previous work of the author (unpublished) on development and testing of a novel GPU-based simulation tool that allows for integrating realistic dispersal modelling into epidemiological and crop models for studying complex interactions between meteorological and biological factors. The results of the research proposed here – a parameterization of existing operational atmospheric dispersal models for key crop diseases and insect pests and a novel simulation tool for flexible exploratory numerical studies of wind-borne transmission of crop pathogens and insect pests – together with previous work of the author provides a toolbox and research profile that fills a gap in the German research landscape. The embedding of the Walter-Benjamin Project in the Crop Sciences Group at the University of Bonn with close affiliation to the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) provides an excellent network, which, under the guidance of the scientific mentor, will enable valuable contributions to existing research efforts along with the design of follow-up projects. For me, the WBP will provide an extremely valuable stepping stone into the German research landscape on crop modelling.

• DFG Programme: WBP Position