Validating mathematical models of plant-disease progress in space and time

Experimental studies of the dispersal of plant pathogens, and of the resulting patterns of disease, have long been an important component of botanical epidemiology. Many statistical methods have been developed for the description of the observed patterns of disease. More recently, the spatial aspects of plant disease have been incorporated into mathematical models of epidemics. Model validation usually takes the form of a comparison between the model output and real data; but often the comparison is only an informal one. The use of experimental data to develop empirical generalizations of the characteristics of patterns of plant disease provides an opportunity for a more stringent validation of models of the spatial dynamics of plant-disease epidemics.