Stability analysis and optimal control of plant fungal epidemic: An explicit model with curative factor

Many plants could not escape from diseases caused by fungi. The use of fungicide can help to reduce the spread of the fungi but if it used continuously with the same dosage, the fungi would be invulnerable to fungicide eventually. Hence, it is critical to know the appropriate level of fungicide application and its impact on the dynamics of the plants. In this paper we use an explicit model of fungal outbreaks of plant by taking into account a curative factor including the dynamic of fungicides itself. Granting of fungicide on crops is useful to control the infected plants as well as protecting the vulnerable plants. Optimal control is used to find out how many doses of the appropriate fungicide should be used to cure infected plants. Optimal control is obtained by applying Pontryagin’s Minimum Principle. We found that the presence of appropriate level of fungicide speeds up the reduction of infected plants as well as accelerates the growth of healthy plants.