The development of Verticillium wilt epidemics in olive cv. Arbequina was studied from November 1999 to May 2003 in a drip-irrigated, nontillage orchard established in a soil without a history of the disease at Córdoba, southern Spain. Disease incidence measured at 1-month-intervals increased from 0.2 to 7.8% during this period. Verticillium dahliae infecting the trees was characterized as defoliating (D) or nondefoliating (ND) pathotypes by a specific, multiplex-polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay. Of the symptomatic trees, 87.2 and 12.8% were infected by the D or ND pathotypes, respectively. Dynamics of disease incidence were described by a generalized logistic model with a multiple sigmoid pattern. In the fitted model, the infection rate was highest in the winter to spring period and decreased to minimum values in the summer to fall period. Binary data of disease incidence was analyzed for point pattern and spatial correlation, either directly or after parsing them in contiguous quadrats. Overall, ordinary runs analysis indicated a departure from randomness of disease within rows. The binomial index of dispersion, interclass correlation, and Taylor's power law for various quadrat sizes suggested aggregation of diseased trees within the quadrat sizes tested. Spatial analysis by distance indices showed a nonrandom arrangement of quadrats containing infected trees. Spatial pattern was characterized by the occurrence of several clusters of infected trees. Increasing clustering over time was generally suggested by stronger values of clustering index over time and by the increase in the size of patch clusters. Significant spatial association was found in the clustering of diseased trees over time across cropping seasons; however, clustering was significant only for infections by D V. dahliae, indicating that infections by the D pathotype were aggregated around initial infections. The number and size of clusters of D V. dahliae-infected trees increased over time. Microsatellite-primed PCR assays of a representative number of V. dahliae isolates from diseased trees indicated that the majority of infecting D isolates shared the fingerprinting profile with D V. dahliae isolated from soil of a naturally infested cotton field in close proximity to the orchard, suggesting that short distance dispersal of the pathogen from this soil to the olive orchard may have occurred.
