Diagrammatic scale for severity evaluation of maize white foliar spot

Abstract

Precise evaluation of plant diseases is very important for epidemiology studies and elaboration of control strategies. The diagrammatic scale of diseases contributes for an accurate evaluation and supplies an uniform standard for different evaluators. The objective of this work was to develop and validate a diagrammatic scale to quantify the severity of maize white foliar spot disease. In order to build the scale, minimum and maximum severity extremes of the disease were set by observation, and the intermediate levels were defined by logarithmic increment, according to “Weber-Fechner law of stimulus”. The scale is composed by seven levels of severity: 1.1; 2.1; 4.2; 7.9; 14.4; 25.0 and 39.7%, which were validated by evaluators (10) without any experience in maize white spot disease quantification. Thirty leaves of corn with heterogeneous levels of the disease were analyzed and the severity was estimated by the evaluators, at first, without the scale and then, prior to that, with the proposed scale. Simple linear regressions relating the real values of severity and the estimated severities were used for the accuracy analysis of the evaluators, while the coefficients of determination and variance of absolute errors determined the precision of the evaluators. Visual estimation of severity was precise with the use of the diagrammatic scale. The proposed diagrammatic scale is adequate to estimate the severity of maize white foliar spot  disease, and can be used in epidemiology studies.