Spreading Dynamics from Social-Network Models to Complex Agricultural Systems: A Mini-Review

Spreading dynamics have been extensively studied in social, communication, and epidemiological networks, leading to substantial advances in understanding spreading thresholds, outbreak patterns, temporal dynamics, and phase transitions. However, their extension to other complex systems, particularly agricultural systems, remains less systematically explored. In this mini-review, we summarize representative spreading models and theoretical approaches developed for complex networks. We first review spreading dynamics on single-layer networks and then discuss their extensions to multilayer, temporal, and higher-order networks, highlighting how increasingly complex interaction structures affect spreading thresholds, outbreak patterns, and phase transitions. We subsequently examine how these models and theoretical approaches can be transferred from social networks to complex agricultural systems. Representative applications include crop diseases and pests, livestock diseases, agricultural information and technology diffusion, and coupled disease-information processes. Finally, we discuss emerging directions for extending spreading theories to increasingly complex agricultural systems. This review may help clarify the generality and transferability of spreading theories across different networked systems and stimulate their further development in complex agricultural contexts.