Clotilde defended her PhD thesis at Université Côte d’Azur on January 5th 2023.
She worked on the modelling, analysis and control of coffee leaf rust.
ABSTRACT – Fungal diseases cause significant damages in crops and thus threaten global food security. Fungicides are widely used, despite their negative impact on the environment and human health. In addition, they induce resistance that limits their long-term use. Alternative and sustainable control methods therefore need to be developed. This thesis contributes to this issue through a mathematical modelling approach. The models represent the seasonal dynamics of plant-fungus interactions and integrate a biological control method using hyperparasite releases. The results obtained allowed to determine the quantity and frequency of releases necessary to control the disease. These results were applied to coffee leaf rust, a major coffee disease. Coffee being an important cash crop which provides a living for numerous small producers, controlling coffee leaf rust is a major socio-economic issue.
