Model-based design and assessment of management strategies for epidemics in a heterogeneous landscape

Date

Tuesday 18 October 2016

Time

12:30-13:30

Venue

CSIRO Black Mountain B1 Lecture Theatre

Speaker

Loup Rimbaud, CSIRO Agriculture & Food

Summary

Management strategies of epidemics are often based on expert opinions rather than the formal demonstration of their efficiency. This is due to the difficulty of accounting for both biological processes and human interventions in field trials of various control methods designed to identify the most efficient. Thus, improving these strategies, which have no a priori reason to be optimal, is not an easy task. A promising approach to overcome obstacles linked to experiments consists in modelling both the epidemic process and the control measures. The key drivers of such models can be identified by a sensitivity analysis and, for some of them, better characterized experimentally. Control parameters are other key drivers that can be optimized by taking advantage of the potential of sensitivity analysis.

This approach, applicable to many epidemic diseases, has been tested on the management of sharka, a damaging disease of trees of the genus Prunus (especially apricot, peach and plum). It is caused by Plum pox virus (PPV, genus Potyvirus, transmitted by aphids) and associated with severe economic losses. Experiments on the concurrence between the infectious and symptomatic states of infected plants were carried out to feed a stochastic spatiotemporal model simulating sharka spread. Finally, sensitivity analyses of this model enabled the identification of economically optimal parameters for the management strategy in the simulated epidemic context.

Brief Bio

Loup is a postdoctoral scientist working on plant-pathogen interactions and the management of plant disease epidemics. He research combines simulation modelling with glasshouse and field experiments. He joined CSIRO a few months ago as a postdoctoral fellow to work on durable deployment strategies of genetically-controlled plant resistance. In this seminar, he will present some of the results he obtained during his PhD on the management of a perennial plant disease based on surveillance and removal in orchards.

 This is a public seminar.

NO visitor pass is required for non-CSIRO attendees going to Lecture Theatre Building 1.