Simulação computacional da dinâmica espaço-temporal do pulgão Aphis gossypii Glover, em algodoeiro (Gossypium hirsutum L.) plantado em sistema de fileiras simples

Abstract

Agriculture in Brazil is, historically, one of the main basis of the country’s economy since the beginning of the colonization up to the XXI century, evolving from the extensive monocultures to production diversification. Cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) culture is one of the more traditional in the country and has been giving signs of a strong progress in recent years. However, the pests constitute one of the limiting factors for its exploitation, if efficient control measures are not taken. Among the pests which assail the cotton plant, the Aphis gossypii Glover aphid is considered the key-pest in many producing regions in Brazil and in the world, especially for varieties susceptible to the virus transmitted by them. In the attempt at solving this problem, the farmers perform indiscriminate use of agrochemicals, causing serious environmental problems. In this dissertation, we proposed a new computational model based on the Penna Model, considering the phenological cycle of the cotton plant, in order to support the Integrated Pest Management, pest control philosophy which seeks to preserve and increment natural mortality factors through the integrated use of all possible combat techniques, selected based on technological, economic, ecological and sociological parameters, aiming at maintaining the pest population below the level of economic damage. In this context, based on experimental data, we simulated the spatial-temporal dynamics of the A. gossypii aphid in a network in which each site was considered a plant of the Gossypium hirsutum L. cotton. The results showed that the proposed model was able to reproduce the characteristics of the aphid population, as well as their spatial patterns in nature, indicating that this may be an important tool in establishing control strategies.