Understand how plants are infected by diseases through rainwater droplet splashing from leaf to leaf

So we know that diseases affect plants like they affect humans, but we actually don't understand how diseases in plants get transmitted from one plant to the other. There was evidence that rainfalls are correlated with outbreaks in the field-- meaning that we see outbreaks spreading faster, or appearing, in fields after rainfalls. And we don't understand why. So in the past, what people have been doing is trying to correlate rainfalls with outbreaks. And using that type of very large scale mathematical models to describe spreading on fields, but nobody really looked closely at what happens at the leaf level.

In the past, what has been thought is that when a raindrop hits a plant, that you have some kind of splash dynamic. So splash can be broadly defined as just water falling and then you have basically droplets being emitted from that surface area. But actually, what we saw was that when a raindrop hits a leaf, the outcome of the creation of these droplets that can be emitted, is very much dependent on the type of leaf you're looking at. And obviously one can think of the surface properties as being important for their dynamics, but also the compliance and the mass of the leaves. So the inertia of the leaf actually changes completely the outcome, in terms of the droplet sizes that you will be emitting, their distribution in size, but also their range-- how far they can go. And that determines then how the next plant can be infected.

So it's important to understand the ratios of these different mechanisms because the size distribution and speed at which these drops are generated is going to lead to a different pattern of contamination of the neighboring leaf. If you have a relatively large drop being emitted and falling in a neighboring leaf, it is depositing locally on the surface area many more pathogens than what a small, tiny drop would do. The other difference is that if you have a generation mechanism that produces much smaller droplets, they're more likely to evaporate very quickly and then be evicted maybe to another field through winds. But also when they deposit them, could contain less pathogens so have to do a bit more work in order to infect the next leaf. So the competition between the size, how much pathogens you have in there, and how far these things can go, and how quickly they can evaporate is all what is going to govern the spreading from one plant to the next.

So the first outcome of this is actually being able to predict in some sense how if you have certain crops that have certain mechanical properties, you will expect to have a certain speed and pattern of outbreak in the field-- if a pathogen is introduced and if you know the rainfall process. So this could be tremendous help to better optimize for example, the growth of various crops. So polyculture-- which is a very, very old concept in nature you see that all the time-- crops are being alternated all the time. But giving us insight to how to do this in a smart way, to optimize output in agriculture but also minimize then, outbreaks.