The leaf smut, caused by the fungus Entyloma vignae, is a common disease of cowpea in the Brazilian Northeast. Considering the inexistence of standard methods for assessment of this disease, a diagrammatic key was developed with 1.5, 3.5, 7.0, 14.5, 27.0 and 45.0% of diseased leaf areas and tested for accuracy, precision and reproducibility of the estimatives of leaf smut severity with and without using the key. The diagrammatic key was validated by 10 raters, with and without the key, using 48 cowpea leaflets with different levels of severity previously measured by the software AutoCAD® for Windows. Two evaluations were performed with the diagrammatic key at 7-day interval where different sequences of the same leaves were visually estimated by the same raters. The accuracy and precision of each rater were determined by simple linear regression between actual, evaluated electronically, and estimated severity. Without the diagrammatic key most of raters overestimated disease severity. With the key raters obtained better levels of accuracy and precision, with absolute errors concentrated around 10%. Raters showed good repeatability (90%) and reproducibility (84%) of estimative by using the key. The proposed diagrammatic key was suitable for the evaluation of severity of leaf smut on cowpea.
Vigna unguiculata; Entyloma vignae; leaf disease; pathometry
