The improvement and application of pest and disease models to analyse and predict yield losses including those due to climate change is still a challenge for the scientific community. Applied modelling of crop diseases and pests has mostly targeted the development of support capabilities to schedule scouting or pesticide applications. There is a need for research to both broaden the scope and evaluate the capabilities of pest and disease models. Key research questions not only involve the assessment of the potential effects of climate change on known pathosystems, but also on new pathogens which could alter the (still incompletely documented) impacts of pests and diseases on agricultural systems. Yield loss data collected in various current environments may no longer represent a adequate reference to develop tactical, decision-oriented, models for plant diseases and pests and their impacts, because of the ongoing changes in climate patterns. Process-based agricultural simulation modelling, on the other hand, appears to represent a viable methodology to estimate the impacts of these potential effects. A new generation of tools based on state-of-the-art knowledge and technologies is needed to allow systems analysis including key processes and their dynamics over appropriate suitable range of environmental variables. This paper offers a brief overview of the current state of development in coupling pest and disease models to crop models, and discusses technical and scientific challenges. We propose a five-stage roadmap to improve the simulation of the impacts caused by plant diseases and pests; i) improve the quality and availability of data for model inputs; ii) improve the quality and availability of data for model evaluation; iii) improve the integration with crop models; iv) improve the processes for model evaluation; and v) develop a community of plant pest and disease modelers.

中文翻译：

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模拟病虫害对农业系统的影响

改进和应用病虫害模型来分析和预测产量损失，包括气候变化造成的损失，仍然是科学界面临的挑战。作物病虫害的应用建模主要针对支持能力的开发，以安排侦察或杀虫剂应用。需要开展研究以扩大病虫害模型的范围和评估其能力。关键研究问题不仅涉及评估气候变化对已知病原系统的潜在影响，还涉及可能改变病虫害对农业系统（仍未完全记录）影响的新病原体。在各种当前环境中收集的产量损失数据可能不再代表制定战术、决策导向、由于气候模式的持续变化，植物病虫害及其影响的模型。另一方面，基于过程的农业模拟建模似乎代表了一种可行的方法来估计这些潜在影响的影响。需要基于最先进知识和技术的新一代工具来进行系统分析，包括关键过程及其在适当合适的环境变量范围内的动态。本文简要概述了将病虫害模型与作物模型相结合的当前发展状况，并讨论了技术和科学挑战。我们提出了一个五阶段路线图，以改进对植物病虫害影响的模拟；i) 提高模型输入数据的质量和可用性；ii) 提高模型评估数据的质量和可用性；iii) 改进与作物模型的集成；iv) 改进模型评估过程；v) 建立一个植物病虫害建模社区。