An Extension of Mathematical Model for Severity of Rice Blast Disease

This paper aims to extend the spore dispersal model to the Healthy-Latent-InfectiousRemoved (HLIR) epidemic model for assessing the severity of rice blast disease. The model was solved by the Finite Difference Method (FDM). The results of the model were compared to data from the Prachinburi Rice Research Center (PRRC) on the severity of rice blast disease. Because of a small error, the comparison results showed good agreement between the PRRC data and the simulation by looking at the value of Willmott’s index of agreement (d). The first bed d was 0.7166, while the second bed d was 0.6421, indicating the model’s performance. Furthermore, the optimal parameter, the fraction of spores deposited on the crop, was determined to be 0.173 and 0.016 for beds 1 and 2, respectively. The model can simulate and analyze rice blast outbreaks for educational purposes in future preparedness planning.