Temporal Progress of Yellow Sigatoka and Aerobiology of Mycosphaerella musicola Spores

An understanding of the progression of a disease is important in the adoption of control strategies as well as the evaluation of their efficacies. Temporal analysis is especially useful because it integrates the evolution of the interaction between the components of the pathosystem, as expressed by the accumulated data on the incidence and severity of disease and depicted by the disease progression curve. Within a given patho‐system, the dispersed airborne spores are important components in the progress of plant disease epidemics. Our aims were to evaluate the temporal dynamics of yellow Sigatoka in a banana plantation located in Coronel Pacheco, MG, Brazil, and to assess the aerobiology of Mycosphaerella musicola spores throughout the year. During the rainy season, we observed intense disease progression concomitant with high rates of leaf emission, which caused rapid reversal of the severity peaks after the maximum rates were reached. The yellow Sigatoka progress curve showed two peaks of extreme severity. The first, which occurred during the rainy season, was predominantly caused by a high concentration of conidia. The second, which occurred during the dry season, was predominantly caused by a high concentration of ascospores in the air. The ascospore concentrations were correlated with the severity of the disease 29 days later, indicating the average latency period of the disease in that region. The patterns of the severity curves for both peaks fit the monomolecular model, and the progression rates were higher during the rainy season than the dry season. The spore concentrations were the same at the two evaluated heights. In all evaluations, it was observed a higher concentration of ascospores than of conidia, with the greatest ascospore concentrations occurring during the early hours of the day and the greatest conidia concentrations occurring later, after the dew has dropped from the leaves.