Marie-Odile Bancal

Experiments have shown that biotrophic fungi divert assimilates for their growth. However, no attempt has been made either to account for this additional sink or to predict to what extent it competes with both grain filling and plant reserve metabolism for carbon. Fungal sink competitiveness with grains was quantified by a mixed experimental-modelling approach based on winter wheat infected by Puccinia triticina. One week after anthesis, plants grown under controlled conditions were inoculated with varying loads. Sporulation was recorded while plants underwent varying degrees of shading, ensuring a range of both fungal sink and host source levels. Inoculation load significantly increased both sporulating area and rate. Shading significantly affected net assimilation, reserve mobilization and sporulating area, but not grain filling or sporulation rates. An existing carbon partitioning (source-sink) model for wheat during the grain filling period was then enhanced, in which two parameters characterize every sink: carriage capacity and substrate affinity. Fungal sink competitiveness with host sources and sinks was modelled by representing spore production as another sink in diseased wheat during grain filling. Data from the experiment were fitted to the model to provide the fungal sink parameters. Fungal carriage capacity was 0·56 ± 0·01 µg dry matter °Cd(-1) per lesion, much less than grain filling capacity, even in highly infected plants; however, fungal sporulation had a competitive priority for assimilates over grain filling. Simulation with virtual crops accounted for the importance of the relative contribution of photosynthesis loss, anticipated reserve depletion and spore production when light level and disease severity vary. The grain filling rate was less reduced than photosynthesis; however, over the long term, yield loss could double because the earlier reserve depletion observed here would shorten the duration of grain filling. Source-sink modelling holds the promise of accounting for plant-pathogen interactions over time under fluctuating climatic/lighting conditions in a robust way.

The development of dynamic models jointly to simulate host growth and disease spread necessitates a precise description of pathogen dispersal in relation to canopy structure. In this study, we measured disease spread from a single infected leaf positioned at different heights in wheat canopies. The resulting lesion distribution was described along crop rows and over three leaf layers. The spore sources, although limited to a single leaf, nearly saturated the host surface accessible to the spores. Most of the lesions were found within 30 to 40 cm of the source. The vertical position of the source influenced the lesion distribution and the steepness of the disease gradients. The leaf layer and the wheat row that contained the spore source were the most infected. Close to the source, a few heavily infected leaves produced steep disease gradients, whereas spore diffusion resulted in shallower gradients along the adjacent rows and on the other leaf layers. Depending on the precision needed, the lesion distribution can be described either at the level of leaf layers or by dispersal gradients for each row and leaf layer.

French wheat grains may be of little value on world markets because they have low and highly variable grain protein concentrations (GPC). This nitrogen-yield to yield ratio depends on crop nitrogen (N) fertilization as well as on crop capacity to use N, which is known to vary with climate and disease severity. Here an examination is made of the respective roles that N remobilization and post-anthesis N uptake play in N yield variations; in particular, when wheat crops (Triticum aestivum) are affected by leaf rust (Puccinia triticina) and Septoria tritici blotch (teleomorph Mycosphaerella graminicola). Data from a 4-year field experiment was used to analyse N yield variations in wheat crops grown either with a third or no late N fertilization. Natural aerial epidemics ensured a range of disease severity, and fungicide ensured disease-free control plots. The data set of Gooding et al. (2005, Journal of Agricultural Science143: 503–518) was incorporated in order to enlarge the range of conditions. Post-anthesis N uptake accounted for a third of N yield whilst N remobilization accounted for two-thirds in all crops whether affected by diseases or not. However, variations in N yield were highly correlated with post-anthesis N uptake, more than with N remobilization, in diseased and also healthy crops. Furthermore, N remobilization did not significantly correlate with N yield in healthy crops. These findings matched data from studies using various wheat genotypes under various management and climatic conditions. Leaf area duration (LAD) accurately predicted N remobilization whether or not crops were diseased; in diseased crops, LAD also accurately predicted N uptake. Under the experimental conditions, N yield variations were closely associated with post-anthesis N uptake in diseased but also in healthy crops. Understanding the respective roles of N uptake and N remobilization in the case of diseased and healthy crops holds the promise of better modelling of variations in N yield, and thus in GPC.

Crop protection strategies, based on preventing quantitative crop losses rather than pest outbreaks, are being developed as a promising way to reduce fungicide use. The Bastiaans' model was applied to winter wheat crops (Triticum aestivum) affected by leaf rust (Puccinia triticina) and Septoria tritici blotch (STB; Mycosphaerella graminicola) under a range of crop management conditions. This study examined (a) whether green leaf area per layer accurately accounts for growth loss; and (b) whether from growth loss it is possible to derive yield loss accurately and simply. Over 5 years of field experiments, numerous green leaf area dynamics were analysed during the post-anthesis period on wheat crops using natural aerial epidemics of leaf rust and STB. When radiation use efficiency (RUE) was derived from bulk green leaf area index (GLAI), RUE_bulk was hardly accurate and exhibited large variations among diseased wheat crops, thus extending outside the biological range. In contrast, when RUE was derived from GLAI loss per layer, RUE_layer was a more accurate calculation and fell within the biological range. In one situation out of 13, no significant shift in the RUE_layer of diseased crops vs. healthy crops was observed. A single linear relationship linked yield to post-anthesis accumulated growth for all treatments. Its slope, not different from 1, suggests that the allocation of post-anthesis photosynthates to grains was not affected by the late occurring diseases under study. The mobilization of pre-anthesis reserves completely accounted for the intercept value. The results strongly suggest that a simple model based on green leaf area per layer and pre-anthesis reserves can predict both growth and yield of wheat suffering from late epidemics of foliar diseases over a range of crop practices. It could help in better understanding how crop structure and reserve management contribute to tolerance of wheat genotypes to leaf diseases.

To develop mechanistic yield loss models for biotrophic fungi, we need better account for the export of dry matter, carbon, and nitrogen from the leaf into the spores. Three experiments in controlled environment chambers were performed to study the dynamics of uredospores production of Puccinia triticina on seedling leaves of wheat in relation to time, lesion density, and sporulating surface area. The detrimental effect of lesion density on the sporulation capacity of brown rust lesions was confirmed. When lesion density increased, spores production per lesion strongly decreased. However, our results showed that increasing lesion density also greatly reduces lesion size. A model was developed to summarize these relationships. Our main conclusion is that the density effect on spore production per lesion is accounted for by lesion size. When sporulation was related to the sporulating surface area, it became independent of density. As well, carbon and nitrogen contents of the spores were independent of lesion density. Our data suggest that when nitrogen available in the host is limiting, spore production is reduced but nitrogen content of spores tend to remain stable.