The growing demand for localized predictions, spatial pattern and hotspot analyses over large regions has prompted the application of the Geographical Information System (GIS) and geostatistics that can be used to analyse and manage plant disease information data. GIS has been used most extensively for mapping distributions of disease or specific genotypes of plant pathogen (Nelson et al., 1994). Spatial pattern and hotspot analyses have been applied in the field of plant pathology on a variety of scales, from single plots to agricyltural regions, to analyse the interactions between pathogens, hosts and the environment in relation to plant disease epidemics. The study of spatial pattern and hotspots can provide quantitative information on population dynamics, aid in the design of epidemiological studies and sampling programmers for disease is pathogen monitoring, and can be used to generate hypotheses about underying ecological processes.

Main Research: Dr Idris Abu Seman