Distinguished Professor in Plant Protection and Associate Chair Jakob Erikkson Prize in Plant Pathology Epidemiology of plant diseases, disease modeling and prediction, and crop biosecurity Lab web site: Madden Lab

View highlight piece on the Fusarium Head Blight Risk Assessment Tool > pdf

Who am I?

I was born and raised in Ashland, Pennsylvania, a small coal mining town in the eastern part of the state. I attended The Pennsylvania State University and received a B.S. degree in Biology/Botany in 1975. During my senior year I took the introductory course in plant pathology and fell in love with the field. In fact, the lecture on epidemiology inspired me to emphasize this area in graduate school. I stayed at Penn State to earn M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in plant pathology because, in the 1970's, this was clearly the best school to study botanical epidemiology. During my graduate education I developed a strong interest in the population biology of diseases and developed skills in computer science, mathematics, and statistics. After graduating in 1980, I came to Ohio State University (Wooster Campus) to work as a research scientist. I became an assistant professor in 1983, and eventually was promoted to full professor in 1991. Throughout my career I have been most interested in how plant diseases behave at the population (field and region) level, and have worked on many diseases caused by fungi and viruses. I often use statistics and mathematics to represent epidemics and to evaluate control strategies. Besides my research and teaching at Ohio State, I am very active in the national professional organization of plant pathologists, the American Phytopathological Society (APS). Previously I was Editor-in-Chief of the scientific journal Phytopathology, and I served as President of APS from 1996-1997. Through my national activities I am trying to improve public understanding of the impact of plant diseases on food production worldwide, and draw realistic attention to the threat of plant pathogens as weapons against U.S. crops.

Teaching Interests

I teach a graduate level course in Plant Disease Epidemiology, where we use the new textbook I co-wrote with Gareth Hughes and Frank van den Bosch, The Study of Plant Disease Epidemics. I also give lectures in other courses, especially on biosecurity issues. I am very active advising graduate students and post-doctoral researchers.

Research Area

My research is focused on understanding and describing plant diseases at the population level and relating disease intensity to crop losses. I use mathematics and statistics to characterize disease epidemics in time and space with the goal of determining which biological and physical factors best predict: disease invasion, persistence, outbreaks, and the magnitude of disease spread. Recently, I have been using models to develop approaches for assessing the threat of plant pathogens as bioterrorism weapons against U.S. crops. For the last 20 years I have worked heavily on determining how rainfall affects splash dispersal of fungal spores. This basic work has increased our understanding of how fungal spores move within fields and between fields, and has shown how to better control some economically important diseases.

I do not have a specific crop responsibility, although I have worked a great deal with fungal diseases of strawberry and other fruit crops. I am especially interested in anthracnose of strawberry, caused by Colletotrichum acutatum, leather rot, caused by Phytophthora cactorum, fungal diseases of grapes, and Fusarium head blight of wheat and barley. Recently, I have worked extensively on developing risk and epidemiological models for Fusarium head blight. Although I am interested in controlling these diseases, my research on the spatial-temporal disease dynamics also serves as a model for similar diseases on many crops. I also work in several interdisciplinary projects with other plant pathologists and plant scientists to better understand and manage plant diseases.

Selected Publications

• Campbell, C. L., and L. V. Madden. 1990. Introduction to Plant Disease Epidemiology. Wiley-Interscience, NY. 532 pp.

• Madden, L. V., G. Hughes, and F. van den Bosch. 2007. The Study of Plant Disease Epidemics. APS Press, St. Paul, MN.
  

• Madden, L. V., L. L. Wilson, and M. A. Ellis. 1993. Field spread of anthracnose fruit rot of strawberry in relation to ground cover and ambient weather conditions. Plant Disease 77:861-866.

• Madden, L. V., and G. Hughes. 1995. Plant disease incidence: distributions, heterogeneity, and temporal analysis. Annual Review of Phytopathology 33: 529-564.

• Hughes, G. and L. V. Madden. 1996. Cluster sampling for disease incidence data. Phytopathology 86: 132-137.

• Madden, L. V., X. Yang, and L. L. Wilson. 1996. Effects of rain intensity on splash dispersal of Colletotrichum acutatum. Phytopathology 86:864-874.

• Hughes, G., N. McRoberts, L. V. Madden, and S. C. Nelson. 1997. Validating mathematical models of plant disease progress in space and time. IMA Journal of Mathematics Applied in Medicine and Biology 14: 83-112.

• Madden, L. V. 1997. Effects of rain on the splash dispersal of fungal pathogens. Can. J. Plant Pathol. 19: 225-230.

• Pielaat, A., L. V. Madden, and G. Gort. 1998. Spores splashing under different environmental conditions: A modeling approach. Phytopathology 88: 1131-1140.

• Madden, L. V., and G. Hughes. 1999. An effective sample size for predicting plant disease incidence in a spatial hierarchy. Phytopathology. 89: 770-781.

• Madden, L. V., and G. Hughes. 1999. Sampling for plant disease incidence. Phytopathology 89: 1088-1103.

• Turechek, W. W., and L. V. Madden. 2000. Analysis of the association between the incidence of two spatially aggregated foliar diseases of strawberry. Phytopathology 90:157-170.

• Madden, L. V., M. A. Ellis, N. Lalancette, G. Hughes, and L. L. Wilson. 2000. Evaluation of a disease warning system for downy mildew of grapes. Plant Disease 84: 549-554.

• Madden, L. V., M. J. Jeger, and F. van den Bosch. 2000. A theoretical assessment of the effects of vector-virus transmission mechanism on plant virus disease epidemics. Phytopathology 90: 576-594.

• Madden, L. V., G. Hughes, and M. E. Irwin. 2000. Coupling disease-progress-curve and time-of-infection functions for predicting yield loss of crops. Phytopathology 90: 788-800.

• Madden, L. V., and van den Bosch, F. 2002. A population-dynamic approach to assess the threat of plant pathogens as biological weapons against annual crops. BioScience 52: 65-74.

• Madden, L. V., Turechek, W. W., and Nita, M. 2002. Evaluation of generalized linear mixed models for analyzing disease incidence data obtained in designed experiments. Plant Disease 86: 316-325.

• Wheelis, M., Casagrande, R., and Madden, L. V. 2002. Biological attack on agriculture: low-tech, high-impact bioterrorism. BioScience 52: 569-576.

• Pethybridge, S. J., and Madden, L. V. 2003. Analysis of spatio-temporal dynamics of virus spread in an Australian hop garden by stochastic modeling. Plant Disease 87: 56-62.

• Turechek, W. W., and Madden, L. V. 2003. A generalized linear modeling approach for characterizing disease incidence in a spatial hierarchy. Phytopathology 93: 458-466.

• De Wolf, E. D., Madden, L. V., and Lipps, P. E. 2003. Risk assessment models for wheat Fusarium head blight epidemics based on within-season weather data. Phytopathology 93: 428-435.

• McRoberts, N., Hughes, G., and Madden, L. V. 2003. The theoretical basis and practical application of relationships between different disease intensity measurements in plants. Annals of Applied Biology 142: 191-211.

• Hughes, G., and Madden, L. V. 2003. Evaluating predictive models with application in regulatory policy for invasive weeds. Agricultural Systems 76: 755-774.

• Madden, L. V., and G. Hughes. 2002. Plant epidemics, models, and analysis. In: Encyclopedia of Environmetrics, Volume 3. Pages 1557-1562 in: A. El-Shaarawi and W. Piegorsch, editors. John Wiley & Sons.

• Madden, L. V., and Wheelis, M. 2003. The threat of plant pathogens as weapons against U.S. crops. Annual Review of Phytopathology 41: 155-176.

• Shah, D., and Madden, L. V. 2004. Nonparametric analysis of ordinal data in designed factorial experiments. Phytopathology 94: 33-43.
• Jeger, M. J., Holt, J., van den Bosch, F., and Madden, L. V. 2004. Epidemiology of insect transmitted plant viruses: modelling disease dynamics and control interventions. Physiological Entomology 29: 291-304.
• Paul, P. A., El-Allaf, S. M., Lipps, P. E., and Madden, L. V. 2004. Rain splash dispersal of Gibberella zeae within wheat canopies in Ohio. Phytopathology 94: 1342-1349.
• Xu, X.-M., and Madden, L. V. 2005. Interrelationships among SADIE indices for characterizing spatial patterns of organisms. Phytopathology 95: 874-883.
• Paul, P. M., El-Allaf, S. M., Lipps, P. E., and Madden, L. V. 2005. Relationships between incidence and severity of Fusarium head blight on winter wheat in Ohio. Phytopathology 95: 1049-1060.
• Paul, P. M., Lipps, P. E., and Madden, L. V. 2005. Relationship between visual estimates of Fusarium head blight intensity and deoxynivalenol accumulation in harvested wheat grain: A meta-analysis. Phytopathology 95: 1225-1236.
• Schaad, N. W., Abrams, J., Madden, L. V., Frederick, R. D., Luster, D. G., Damsteegt, V. D., and Vidaver, A. K. 2006. An assessment model for rating high-threat crop pathogens. Phytopathology 96: 616-621.
• Madden, L. V. 2006. Botanical epidemiology: Some key advances and its continuing role in disease management. European Journal of Plant Pathology 115: 3-23. 
• Paul, P. A., Lipps, P. E., and Madden, L. V. 2006. Meta-analysis of regression coefficients for the relationship between Fusarium head blight and deoxynivalenol content of wheat. Phytopathology 96: 951-961.
• Nita, M., Ellis, M. A., Wilson, L. L., and Madden, L. V. 2006. Evaluation of a disease warning system for Phomopsis cane and leaf spot of grape: A field study. Plant Disease 90: 1239-1246.
• Saint-Jean, S., Testa, A., Madden, L. V., and Huber, L. 2006. Relationship between pathogen splash dispersal gradient and Weber number of impacting drops. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 141: 257-262.
• Paul, P. A., Lipps, P. E., Hershman, D. E., McMullen, M. P., Draper, M. A., and Madden, L. V. 2007. A quantitative review of tebuconazole effect on Fusarium head blight and deoxynivalenol content in wheat. Phytopathology 97: 211-220.
• Madden, L. V., Paul, P. A., and Lipps, P. E. 2007. Consideration of nonparametric approaches for assessing genotype-by-environment (G ´ E) interactions with disease severity data. Plant Disease 91: 891-900.
• Paul, P. A., Lipps, P. E., De Wolf, E., Shaner, G., Buechley, G., Adhikari, T., Ali, S., Stein, J., Osborne, L., and Madden, L. V. 2007. A distributed-lag analysis of the relationship between Gibberella zeae inoculum density on wheat spikes and weather variables. Phytopathology 97: 1608-1624.
• Bathke, A. C., Harrar, S. W., and Madden, L. V. 2008. How to compare small multivariate samples using nonparametric tests. Computational Statistics and Data Analysis 52: 4951-4965.
• Ellis, M.A., Madden, L.V., Wright, S.R., Wilson, L.L. 2008. Efficacy of preharvest fungicide applications and cold storage for postharvest control of Botrytis fruit rot (gray mold) on red raspberry. Plant Health Progress doi:10.1094/PHP-2008-1015-01-RS. [http://www.plantmanagementnetwork.org/sub/php/research/2008/graymold/]
• Nita, M., Ellis, M. A., and Madden, L. V. 2008. Variation in disease incidence of Phomopsis cane and leaf spot of grape in commercial vineyards in Ohio. Plant Disease 92: 1053-1061.
• Paul, P. A., Lipps, P. E., Hershman, D. E., McMullen, M. P., Draper, M. A., and Madden, L. V. 2008. Efficacy of triazole-based fungicides for Fusarium head blight and deoxynivalenol control in wheat: A multivariate meta-analysis. Phytopathology 98: 999-1011.
• van den Bosch, F., McRoberts, N., van den Berg, F., and Madden, L. V. 2008. The basic reproduction number of plant pathogens: Matrix approaches to complex dynamics. Phytopathology 98: 239-249.

Computer Software

Most of my statistical and mathematical modeling, especially in recent years, has done using commercial software, primarily SAS, MINITAB, and MATHCAD. However, I have written or prepared over the years computer programs for specialized analyses. Some programs with reasonable documentation are available here. Other programs may be added in the future.

Beta-binomial fitting software, for overdispersed disease incidence

BBD.zip

Spatio-temporal autocorrelation and partial autocorrelation analysis of disease intensity

STAUTO.zip

Programs for using SAS to perform: 1) generalized linear mixed model analysis for binary and proportion data; 2) nonparametric analysis of ordinal data from factorial designs using the methodology of Brunner and colleagues.

SASprograms.zip

Contact Information

Larry Madden
Department of Plant Pathology
The Ohio State University
Ohio Agricultural Research & Development Center
1680 Madison Avenue
Wooster, Ohio 44691-4096

Phone: (330) 263-3839
FAX: (330) 263-3841
Email: madden.1@osu.edu