Rubber powdery mildew disease (Oidium heveae) is a serious threat to natural rubber production (Hevea brasiliensis) in some rubber developing regions of the world. Both phenological- and meteorological-related factors have been reported influencing the powdery mildew disease. However, few studies have investigated the effects of both phenological- and meteorological-related factors on the disease. The objective of this study is to quantify the contributions of phenological- and meteorological-related factors to affect the disease. We used the partial least squares (PLS) regression method to comprehensively quantify the effects of thirty-five phenological related factors and six meteorological factors on the infection level of powdery mildew of rubber trees over 9-year records (2003–2011). The relative contributions of significant factors were further investigated by the variation partition analysis. We found that the most influential variables were the mean temperature during winter and the duration of leaf development to maturation which explained 32 and 26% of the variations in the infection level. We found the controlling role of winter mean temperature, for the first time, on the infection level of powdery mildew. The controlling role of winter temperature may have directly increase the infection level when winter temperature is high and indirectly increase the infection level through prolonging the duration of leaf development to maturation, although the duration itself had smaller influences. We detected a warming trend of the winter temperatures from 2003 to 2011, which indicates that the infection level of powdery mildew will be increased if the winter warming continues.

橡胶白粉病 ( Oidium heveae)严重威胁天然橡胶生产 ( Hevea brasiliensis)) 在世界一些橡胶开发地区。据报道，物候和气象相关因素都会影响白粉病。然而，很少有研究调查物候和气象相关因素对疾病的影响。本研究的目的是量化物候和气象相关因素对疾病的影响。我们使用偏最小二乘法 (PLS) 回归方法综合量化了 9 年记录 (2003-2011) 中 35 个物候相关因素和 6 个气象因素对橡胶树白粉病感染水平的影响。通过变异划分分析进一步研究了重要因素的相对贡献。我们发现最有影响的变量是冬季的平均温度和叶片发育到成熟的持续时间，这解释了感染水平变化的 32% 和 26%。我们首次发现了冬季平均温度对白粉病感染水平的控制作用。冬季温度的控制作用可能在冬季温度较高时直接增加侵染水平，并通过延长叶片发育至成熟的持续时间间接增加侵染水平，尽管持续时间本身影响较小。我们检测到 2003 年至 2011 年冬季气温有升高的趋势，这表明如果冬季继续变暖，白粉病的感染水平将会增加。