Plant disease epidemics, caused by established and invasive pathogen species, continue to impact a world increasingly concerned with the quantity and quality of its primary food supply. The Study of Plant Disease Epidemics is a comprehensive manual that introduces readers to the essential principles and concepts of plant disease epidemiology.

Plant disease epidemiology is a dynamic science that forms an essential part of the study of plant pathology. This book brings together a team of 35 international experts. Each chapter deals with an essential component of the subject and allows the reader to fully understand how each exerts its influence on the progress of pathogen populations in plant populations over a defined time scale. This edition has new, revised and updated chapters.

Plant disease epidemiology is a dynamic science that forms an essential part of the study of plant pathology. This book brings together a team of 35 international experts. Each chapter deals with an essential component of the subject and allows the reader to fully understand how each exerts its influence on the progress of pathogen populations in plant populations over a defined time scale. This edition has new, revised and updated chapters.

Plant Diseases: Epidemics and Control provides a description of the methods of epidemiological analysis based on infection rates and the relation between the amount of inoculum and the amount of disease it produces. The book shows how to study the increase of pathogen populations and the epidemiological strategy to be adopted to control the epidemic of plant diseases. The text covers the calculation of the logarithmic increase of disease; use of epidemiology in the study of control; forms of sanitation; the use of resistant plant varieties; and the design of field experiments. Plant pathologists and breeders, agriculturists, horticulturists, research workers, teachers, and students will find the text invaluable.

Development of plant disease epidemiology, monotoring epidemics: host, environment, pathogen and disease. Modeling and data analysis. Temporal analysis of epidemics: description and comparison of disease progress curves and advaced topics. Spatial aspects of plant disease epidemics: dispersla gradients and long-range transport and analysis of spatial pattern-simulation models of plant diseases, designings experiments and smapling, crop loss assessment and modeling and forecasting plant disease.

Comparison is a powerful cognitive research tool in science since it does "across studies" to evaluate similarities and differences, e.g. across taxa or diseases. This book deals with comparative research on plant disease epidemics. Comparisons are done in specifically designed experiments or with posterior analyses. From the apparently unlimited diversity of epidemics of hundreds of diseases, comparative epidemiology may eventually extract a number of basic types. These findings are very important to crop protection. Plant disease epidemiology, being the ecological branch of plant pathology, may also be of value to ecologists, but also epidemiologists in the areas of animal or human diseases may find interesting results, applicable to their areas of research.

Most books on epidemiology have treated the subject from a statistical, mathematical or computer applicational point of view. However, experiments must be performed first to provide the data for models which in turn can then be proven by further experimentation. This mutual interplay of theory and empirics gives epidemiology its scientific thrust and charm. This book provides a choice of methods for varying applications and objectives, covering all important aspects for the designing of experiments. Furthermore, the reader is supplied with solutions to his experimental problems and many "tricks of the trade". The newcomer to the field will also profit by this methodology guide.

During the past decade epidemiology has developed beyond the simple desrip tion of ecological factors affecting disease. Population dynamics has become a major item of research, which in turn has prompted new approaches and philosophy. Though basically an empirical science, epidemiology has of necessity veered towards mathematical methods and modeling. The growing importance of epidemiology was acknowledged by the organizers of the 2nd International Congress of Plant Pathology, held in Minneapolis in September 1973. One of the symposia was devoted to a discussion of the role of mathematics and modeling in the analysis of epidemics. The speakers considered that it would be valuable to expand their contributions for publication. The following chapters give an outline of the record of achievement to date in the use of mathematical analysis and computer techniques in the study of epidemics of plant diseases; at the same time they seek to indicate the greatly enlarged possibilities, still in the early stage~ of investigation, of constructive work on this basis used in the field of epidemiology. A good beginning has been made in clarifying the very complex and sometimes confusing data by means of mathematical models and equations, and later by computer simulations. In this book practical procedures, such as experiments in coding techniques, reduction of data, computer programs, the particular scope of multiple regression analysis in the study of the progress of epidemics, disease increase and severity, disease cycles and crop losses, are variously discussed.