Apple and pear scab ontology

Abstract

An important issue in horticulture is ensuring plant disease, such as scab, prevention and treatment. Apple and pear are among the most widely grown (approximately 43% of all fruit tree area [1]) and economically important fruit crops specified worldwide and in Latvia. Scab diseases caused by ascomycetous fungi Venturia inaequalis and V.pyrina are economically the most important diseases worldwide. Research projects have produced research data covering various aspects of plant-pathogen interactions, but there is no internal linkage analysis, as well as implementation of other types of data (such as environmental and meteorological data, etc.). Establishing such a data integration system would allow the identification of new regularities in plant-pathogen interactions, and provide mechanisms for disease control decisions. Semantic analysis is one of information technology approaches to finding relationships in data. The product of analysis is ontology. There are plant disease ontologies which provide classification of diseases and describe their reasons. However, there is no ontology which describes a specific plant and relations among its farming parameters and disease probability. Such an ontology for apple and pear scab is presented in this paper. The constructed ontology can be applied to develop guidelines or digital expert systems.