Integrated seed health approaches and models

Integrated seed health approaches provide a framework for combining three key seed health management components: formal seed purchase, disease resistant varieties, and on-farm management. Over-reliance on one component may be less effective than strategic combinations of the three components. Seed health models, in the R package seedHealth, support consideration of integrated seed health approaches by evaluating scenarios for combining these components. These results support training and decision-making by researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and project staff. In training applications, the seedHealth package in an online interface illustrates the likely outcomes from changing the three components. The online interface is accessible for users who are not familiar with R. The seedHealth package can also be used to evaluate the likely disease and yield outcomes for specific systems, when sufficient data are available about seed degeneration rates and responses. Application of the seedHealth package for decision-support modeling is accessible for users who can develop or access estimates of seed degeneration rates for their systems. Direct users would be familiar with R applications, while indirect users would collaborate with the direct users.