Geographic Information System (GIS) Application in Plant Disease Epidemiology and Management

Philippines has 110 million population, all are dependent on vivacious agricultural productivity. However, devastating effects of plant pathogens limits crop productivity and affecting food security. In order to make the control decision more effective, it is crucial for early identification of diseases, precise diagnosis and evaluation, surveillance to predict disease outbreaks, and to give adequate time to establish and apply appropriate crop safety and productivity mitigation steps. The use of Geographic Information Systems in Plant Pathology is a modern technology to increase the speed and precision of disease assessment, diagnostics and pathogen detection. In order to demonstrate the distribution and severity of diseases, this system will provide real-time information on the frequency of many plant diseases based on crop resistance, short-term weather forecasts, and turn data information into a geographic information map. In this paper, the application of GIS in plant pathology is discussed as tool for the early detection, outbreak and management of plant disease.