Premium
Identifying when it is financially beneficial to increase or decrease fungicide dose as resistance develops: An evaluation from long‐term field experiments
Author(s) -
Bosch Frank,
Blake Jonathan,
Gosling Paul,
Helps Joe C.,
Paveley Neil
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
plant pathology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.928
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1365-3059
pISSN - 0032-0862
DOI - 10.1111/ppa.13155
Subject(s) - fungicide , biology , crop , population , toxicology , disease control , agronomy , microbiology and biotechnology , demography , sociology
As the frequency of fungicide resistant strains increases in a pathogen population, there is a change in the shape of the response curve of disease severity to fungicide dose. We showed previously, in a theoretical analysis, that such changes can result in an increase or a decrease in the economically optimal dose of fungicide; this depends on how the response curve changes (which is determined jointly by the degree of insensitivity and frequency of a new strain) and the shape of the disease–yield loss relationship (which is a characteristic of the pathogen and crop). Here, we use field dose–response data to estimate economic optimum doses for the control of Zymoseptoria tritici on wheat over a 21‐year period. Resistance to fungicide developed to varying degrees against three modes of action (MoA). Changes of optimal dose across years differed according to MoA, but there was an underlying pattern of initial increase in optimal dose, followed by a decrease (ultimately to zero dose at high levels of fungicide resistance). Fungicides are often applied in mixture and analysis shows that, provided the mixture partner is effective, the economic optimal dose increases less as resistance develops than when the fungicide is used as solo product; however, the subsequent decrease in optimal dose remains.