Damon Smith, Vaughan‑Bascom Professor of Plant Pathology, Department of Plant Pathology, University of Wisconsin–Madison (badgercropnetwork.com); Ben Bradford, Data Scientist, Department of Entomology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
For more than a decade, Dr. Smith’s research and extension program has linked pathogen biology to actionable disease management through the development and deployment of disease forecasting tools. He has co‑chaired the NPMTI Corn Research Area Committee and led efforts to develop and implement predictive tools for tar spot, northern corn leaf blight, gray leaf spot, and Gibberella ear rot. These tools have been deployed for stakeholder use through smartphone applications and, more recently, freely accessible online platforms. The Crop Protection Network Disease Forecasting Tool (https://cropprotectionnetwork.org/crop-disease-forecasting), released in 2025, represents the latest NPMTI‑focused user interface and leverages cloud‑based weather data to forecast disease risk across the United States. During the 2025 field season, the tool received approximately 37,000 page views from 4,800 users.
Dr. Smith is currently working to expand and share this forecasting and deployment expertise across additional NPMTI RACs. Using the established corn modeling and deployment pipeline, his lab is supporting the rollout of predictive models for other crops and production systems represented within NPMTI.
