Modeling risk of Sclerotinia sclerotiorum-induced disease development on canola and dry bean using machine learning algorithms

Diseases caused by the fungus Sclerotinia sclerotiorum are managed mainly through fungicide applications in canola and dry bean. Accurate estimation of the risk of disease development on these crops could help farmers make spraying decisions. Five machine learning (ML) models were evaluated in classification and regression modes for predicting disease establishment under different air temperatures and leaf wetness duration conditions. Model algorithms were trained and tested using 20-fold cross validation. Correspondence between predicted and observed values were measured using Cohen’s Kappa (classification) and Lin’s concordance coefficients (regression). The artificial neural network (ANN) algorithms had average accuracies ≥ 89% (classification) and R(2) ≥ 88% (regression) on canola and dry bean and their correspondence agreements were ≥ 0.83, which is considered substantial to almost perfect. In contrast, logistic regression algorithms had accuracies of 88% for dry bean and 78% for canola; other models were similarly inconsistent. Implementation of ANN models in disease warning systems could help farmers with spraying decisions. At the same time, these models provide insights on temperature and leaf wetness requirements for development of S. sclerotiorum diseases in these crops. Results of this study show the potential of ML models as tools for epidemiological studies on other pathosystems.