White rust, caused by Puccinia horiana, is considered the major disease of Chrysanthemum in Brazil, which results in severe losses for the growers. Despite of its economic importance, very few epidemiological studies have been carried out in Brazil. In order to conduct these studies it is necessary to develop standard methods to quantify disease severity under field conditions. Therefore, a diagrammatic key, including the levels 1, 3, 6, 10, 18, and 30% of diseased leaf area, was elaborated. The severity of the white rust was estimates using the key or not in order to test its accuracy, precision and reproducibility. The diagrammatic key was validated by 10 raters using 50 leaves with different levels of severity, which were previously measured by the AutoCAD® software. Two evaluations were performed with the key at 7-day intervals when different sequences of the same leaves were visually estimated by the same raters. The accuracy and precision of each rater were determined by using simple linear regression between actual and estimated severity. When the key was not used, all raters overestimated disease severity indicating the presence of constant positive errors for all levels of disease severity. The evaluations using the diagrammatic key were more accurate for the great majority of the raters and more precise for all the raters. In addition, the key also showed good repeatability and high level of reproducibility among the evaluations from the different raters. The diagrammatic key is suitable for the evaluation of severity of white rust of Chrysanthemum.
Dendranthema grandiflora; Puccinia horiana; pathometry