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Modelling Inoculum Availability of Plurivorosphaerella nawae in Persimmon Leaf Litter with Bayesian Beta Regression

Circular leaf spot (CLS), caused by Plurivorosphaerella nawae, is a serious disease of persimmon (Diospyros kaki) inducing necrotic lesions on leaves, defoliation and fruit drop. Under Mediter-ranean conditions, P. nawae forms pseudothecia in the leaf litter during winter and ascospores are released in spring infecting susceptible leaves. Persimmon growers are advised to apply fungicides for CLS control during the period of inoculum availability, which was defined based on ascospore counts under the microscope. A model of inoculum availability of P. nawae was developed and evaluated as an alternative to ascospore counts. Leaf litter samples were collected weekly in L’Alcúdia from 2010 to 2015. Leaves were soaked, placed in a wind tunnel, and released ascospores of P. nawae were counted. Hierarchical Bayesian beta regression methods were used to fit the dynamics of ascospore production in the leaf litter. The selected model, having the lowest values of DIC, WAIC and LCPO, included accumulated degree days (ADD) and ADD taking into account the vapor pressure deficit (ADDvpd) as fixed effects, and year as a random effect. This model had a MAE of 0.042 and RMSE of 0.062. The beta regression model was evaluated in four orchards for different years from 2010 to 2015. Higher accuracy was obtained at the beginning and the end of the ascospore production period, which are the events of interest to schedule fungicide sprays for CLS control in Spain. This same modelling framework can be extended to other fungal plant pathogens whose inoculum dynamics are expressed as proportion data.