Influence of temperature and daily leaf wetness duration on the severity of bacterial leaf blight of garlic

ABSTRACT In the present study, climate control chamber conditions were adopted to investigate the influence of temperature (10, 15, 20, 25 and 30°C) and leaf wetness duration (6, 12, 24 and 48 hours) on the severity of bacterial leaf blight of garlic, caused by Pseudomonas marginalis pv. marginalis. The relative density of lesions was influenced by temperature and leaf wetness duration (P<0.05). The disease was more severe at 20°C. The obtained data underwent non-linear regression analysis. Generalized beta function was used to fit the data on severity and temperature, while a logistic function was chosen to represent the effect of leaf wetness duration on the severity of bacterial blight. The response surface resulting of the product of those two functions was expressed as ES = 0.019419 * (((x-5)0.5893) * ((35-x)0.5474)) * (0.51754/(1+23.59597* exp (-0.145695*y))), where: ES represents the estimated severity value (0.1); x, the temperature (ºC), and y, the daily leaf wetness duration (hours). This model shall be validated under field conditions to assess its use as a forecast system for bacterial leaf blight of garlic.