Autoinfection in wheat leaf rust epidemics

Autoinfection (within-host inoculum transmission) allows plant pathogens locally to increase their density on an infected host. Estimating autoinfection is of particular importance in understanding epidemic development in host mixtures. More generally, autoinfection influences the rate of host colonization by the pathogen, as well as pathogen evolution. Despite its importance in epidemiological models, autoinfection has not yet been directly quantified. It was measured here on wheat (Triticum aestivum) leaves infected by a pathogenic fungus (Puccinia triticina). Autoinfection was measured either on inoculated leaves or by assessing the local progeny of spontaneous infections, and was described by a model of the form y = microx(alpha), where alpha accounts for host saturation and micro represents the pathogen multiplication rate resulting from autoinfection. It was shown that autoinfection resulted in typical patterns of disease aggregation at the leaf level and influenced lesion distribution in the crop during the first epidemic stages. The parameter micro was calculated by taking overdispersion of the data and density dependence into account. It was found that a single lesion produced between 50 and 200 offspring by autoinfection, within a pathogen generation. By taking into account environmental variability, it was possible to estimate autoinfection under optimal conditions for epidemic development.