Data, code and software to reproduce the article entitled "Disease regulation in intercropping systems depends on spatial arrangement – a modelling study"

This is the models code and simulation folders (inputs and outputs) to reproduce the article entitled " Disease regulation in intercropping systems depends on spatial arrangement – a modelling study". Here is a summary of the paper: Cultural diversification is presented as an effective method to increase the resilience of agrosystems in the face of climate change and the need to reduce reliance on artificial inputs. In particular, there is a growing interest in understanding how diversified cultures can help in reducing pesticide use. In the case of intercropping, specific mechanisms have been identified which impact disease development: dilution and barrier effects as well as changes in microclimate in the canopy, but they are hardly characterised. We propose a process-based, mechanistic modelling approach to study a virtual wheat/pea intercrop submitted to a brown rust epidemic over 30 reference years, to decipher in silico the effect of these mechanisms and their sensitivity to changes in spatial arrangement of the field. We found that in most cases intercropping had beneficial effects in terms of disease control by protecting the photosynthetic capacity of wheat for longer during the crop cycle, mainly through the alteration in the movement of spores (barrier effect). Field arrangements with greater distances between rows and/or reduced proportion of wheat in the species mix performed better on average, albeit with a high variability mostly due to interannual weather fluctuations. Given the complex interactions between spatial arrangement and annual variability, we argue that modelling is a valuable tool to run multiple simulations, identify scenarios most conducive to effective disease protection, and inform evidence-based decision-making.