Quantifying Sclerotinia head rot of sunflower

Designing and validating a standard area diagram to strengthen accuracy and reliability in assessing Sclerotinia head rot severity.

Overview

This project forms part of Kwanele Sabela’s MSc Agric research and focuses on accurately assessing Sclerotinia head rot in sunflower. The work involves designing and validating a standard area diagram set to improve the consistency and reliability of disease severity ratings. Field surveys, image-based assessments and comparative scoring are used to evaluate how well the tool performs under real production conditions.

Key questions

• Can we develop a Sclerotinia head rot standard area diagram (SAD) that improves accuracy, reliability and rater agreement?
• How can we measure sunflower head rot severity accurately and consistently across raters, environments and seasons?
• What level of rater error (inter- and intra-rater) affects current visual assessments, and how much can a standard area diagram improve reliability?

Outputs

• Extension articles
  • Enhancing sunflower head rot assessments with a purpose-built visual tool
  • Developing and validating an SAD for reliable measurements
• Conference presentations and scientific papers
  • International Symposium on Plant Pathogenic Sclerotiniaceae
• Tools and resources
  • Standard area diagram set (SAD)
  • Training in TraineR2

Status

Completed, awaiting examiner reports.