Potential impact of climate change on brown wheat rust : a preliminary study based on biophysical modelling of infection events and plant-pathogen interactions
Résumé
We address the question of potential climate change effects on interactions between
wheat and brown rust. The paper is based on biophysical modelling approaches and
a climate scenario for four contrasting French sites provided within a project of the
French National Research Agency. Predicted distributions of surface wetness duration
and infection risk were calculated with the help of a big-leaf model of mass and energy
transfer, while plant-pathogen interactions were simulated with the biophysical model,
Ceres-wheat, enriched with recent knowledge on wheat growth in the face of late
epidemics. No particular trend was discernible concerning the infection rates due to
opposite evolutions of two major variables: temperature and surface wetness duration.
Yield of diseased crops remained also nearly constant due to a slight decrease of the
healthy crop yield combined with a lesser evolution of the disease.