An Illustration of Signaling Biogeography: Polymixture Planting and Rice Blast Control in the Philippines Abridged edition

This book is an abridged monograph of my 2006 doctoral dissertation for the Department of Geography at Rutgers University and the Social Sciences Division of the International Rice Research Institute. The dissertation represents the seminal study on signaling biogeography and the first description of polymixture planting in crop disease control. This study answers the research question of why planting a ricefield as multiple varietal mixtures of rice, or polymixture planting, could represent a more effective form of rice blast control than planting a field as a single mixture. The findings suggest that polymixture planting can better control blast dispersal when the different microenvironmental patches that may compose a field are planted with different varietal mixtures of rice that best control blast dispersal within each patch.