Agronomy 2022, 12, 2416. https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy12102416 www.mdpi.com/journal/agronomy
Article
MISSR: A Mentoring Interactive System for Stripe Rust
Reda Ibrahim Omara
1
, Yasser S. A. Mazrou
2,3
, Abdelrahman Elsayed
4
, Nevien Moawad
4
, Yasser Nehela
5,
*
and Atef A. Shahin
1
1
Wheat Diseases Research Department, Plant Pathology Research Institute, Agricultural Research Center,
Giza 12619, Egypt
2
Business Administration Department, Community College, King Khalid University, Guraiger,
Abha 62529, Saudi Arabia
3
Department of Agriculture Economic, Faculty of Agriculture, Tanta University, Tanta 31527, Egypt
4
Climate Change Information Center & Renewable Energy & Expert Systems, Agricultural Research Center,
Giza 12619, Egypt
5
Department of Agricultural Botany, Faculty of Agriculture, Tanta University, Tanta 31511, Egypt
* Correspondence: yasser.nehela@ufl.edu
Abstract: Wheat is one of the most important crops in the world and was considered the major grain
crop grown in Egypt. Nowadays, Egypt is the largest wheat importer in the world and consumes
an extensive amount of it. To decrease the gap between production and consumption and increase
the yield, we need to control wheat diseases, especially stripe rust, due to its major damage to wheat.
Further, we need to advise farmers as early as we can to control and treat them. The paper proposed
an interactive intelligent system to monitor, predict and give the correct advice at the right time to
farmers. This system is called MISSR (Mentoring Interactive System for Stripe Rust). The system is
considered an important means to effectively prevent risks in agricultural production. It also plays
an important role in guiding farmers and decision-makers to plan and implement suitable practices
to increase yield and mitigate stripe-rust disease. On the other hand, it can acquire relevant and
timely information in the areas where this information or data is unavailable. To build this model
for the wheat crop in Egypt, we used wheat experts’ knowledge and climate data API. MISSR is
available as a mobile application to provide access for more farmers and increase its availability.
Keywords: wheat; rust; Puccinia; mobile app; interactive system
1. Introduction
Wheat is the major winter grain crop in Egypt. It represents about 10% of the agri-
culture production in Egypt and about 20% of the total value of the agriculture imports.
Wheat production in Egypt is not adequate for the urgent needs of people, thus more than
50% of the consumption is annually imported. The damage caused by rust diseases is
considered one of the major obstacles facing the production of wheat crops. Stripe rust
caused by Puccinia striiformis f.sp. tritici is a serious wheat disease that causes a severe
economic loss in wheat production in many parts of the world including Egypt [1–4].
Stripe rust requires two distinct hosts.
Since 2010, it has been considered to be macrocyclic rust, after the identification of
Berberis spp. as an alternative host and elucidation of the complete life history of this rust
pathogen for the first time by Jin et al. [5]. Briefly, it spends its Telial/uredinial stages on
the primary host(s), including T. aestivum, however, it spends its pycnial/aecial stages on
an alternate host(s), which mainly include Berberis spp. Fortunately, alternate hosts of P.
striiformis do not exist in Egypt and its urediniospores cannot persist or survive in Egypt
during the summer; nevertheless, the source of a primary inoculum is typically brought
in by northern winds from foreign sources annually [6,7].
Citation: Omara, R.I.; Mazrou,
Y.S.A.; Elsayed, A.; Moawad, N.;
Nehela, Y.; Shahin, A.A. MISSR: A
Mentoring Interactive System for
Stripe Rust. Agronomy 2022, 12, 2416.
https://doi.org/10.3390/
agronomy12102416
Academic Editor: Chao Chen
Received: 27 June 2022
Accepted: 29 September 2022
Published: 5 October 2022
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neu-
tral with regard to jurisdictional
claims in published maps and institu-
tional affiliations.
Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Li-
censee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
This article is an open access article
distributed under the terms and con-
ditions of the Creative Commons At-
tribution (CC BY) license (https://cre-
ativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).