The Spatial-Dynamic Benefits from Cooperative Disease Control in a Perennial Crop

Abstract

Introduction Diseases that damage productive agricultural crops impose significant costs both through foregone revenue from losses in yield, quality, and production and through expenditures undertaken to mitigate those losses. Grapes produced in the Napa Valley are strikingly valuable; although Napa County produced roughly 4% of the total volume of grapes crushed for wine in California in 2014, the winegrape crush in Napa County that year was valued at nearly $720 million, or approximately 24% of the total winegrape crush revenue in the state (U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service and California Department of Food and Agriculture, 2015).1 Since no effective pesticide or other control protocol currently exists for the BGSS and PD in the Napa Valley, growers and policymakers have been concerned about the current and potential economic losses caused by the BGSS, and they are keenly interested in developing effective control strategies. While many important examples of models of pests and diseases of perennial crops have been published (e.g., Regev, Gutierrez, and Feder, 1976; Alston et al., 2013; Fenichel, Richards, and Shanafelt, 2014; Fuller, Alston, and Sambucci, 2014; Atallah et al., 2015; Grogan and Mosquera, 2015), these have not addressed the potential benefits from cooperation between management units (e.g., vineyard operations, farms) in disease control. The role of cooperation in optimal pest control using a spatial-dynamic model was addressed by Bhat and Huffaker (2007) in the...