PLSCI 5020

Systems Epidemiology for Plant Pathology

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2024-2025.

Systems Epidemiology for Plant Pathology offers an expansion of plant pathology concepts into quantitative epidemiology and population biology. The course is taught as two inter-related seven-week modules. The epidemiology module explores the concepts of disease and crop loss and social, economic, and ecological consequences. Students will gain underpinning theory and hands-on experience with measuring disease, crop loss modeling, spatial and temporal attributes of epidemics. The population biology module focuses on biological processes that affect plant pathogen populations and communities in natural and agronomic settings, and how these processes affect disease development and control. These concepts include, but are not limited to, pathogen and virulence diversity, host-pathogen interaction at the population level, selection pressure, super-races, pathogen sexual vs. clonal reproduction, invasive species, quorum-sensing, etc. Although this course is organized into two modules, the over-arching theme of a systems approach will intertwine through all material.

When Offered Spring.

Prerequisites/Corequisites Prerequisite: PLSCI 3010 or equivalent.

Distribution Category (OPHLS-AG)

• Describe epidemiological concepts and apply selected statistical approaches to test assumptions and model data.
• Conclude why and how pathogen populations change and the basis for pathogen virulence evolution.
• Explain how pathogen population structure affects plant disease development and epidemic progress.
• Apply epidemiological and population biology concepts into systems-level thinking for hypotheses development and decisions for disease management.
• Apply population biology, population genetics, and epidemiological concepts in the design of research experiments and data analysis.

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