An agricultural control of  Radopholus similis in banana plantations

Tankam Chedjou, Israël; Touzeau, Suzanne; Grognard, Frédéric; Mailleret, Ludovic; Tewa, Jean-Jules

An agricultural control of Radopholus similis in banana plantations

2018

Tankam Chedjou, Israël | Touzeau, Suzanne | Grognard, Frédéric | Mailleret, Ludovic | Tewa, Jean-Jules

Radopholus similis is the major parasitic nematode of banana and plantain plants worldwide. R. Similis feeds on the root tissues and causes damages going from simple root lesions, reducing the crop yield, to the fall of seedlings. Hence, R. similis is one of the most regulated plant pests. Its control mainly relies on toxic nematicides, but with limited efficiency. Our global aim is to design more efficient and sustainable control strategies, including alternative methods to nematicides. Our approach is based on a hybrid model describing the plant-nematode interactions over several cropping seasons. During the inter-season, in the absence of host, the pest population undergoes a rapid decay. A longer inter-season duration reduces the pest population the following season, which is correlated with the seasonal crop yield. However, longer inter-season durations also decrease the number of cropping seasons during a fixed time horizon, and potentially the multi-seasonal yield. An optimisation problem is therefore formulated to determine the inter-season duration that maximises the multi-seasonal yield. Two cases are considered: a fixed or a variable inter-season duration. The existence of an optimal solution is proven and its location is computed. Numerical simulations are provided to illustrate our results.

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