Efforts of researchers and other stakeholders to manage an unfolding epidemic: Lessons from potato purple top in Ecuador

ABSTRACT

Purple top is a phytosanitary problem affecting potato farmers in Ecuador. Since its emergence, stakeholders implement – with limited success – isolated efforts to reduce the spread of this problem. Hence, this study aimed to derive stakeholders’ enabling responses to manage the spread of emerging plant diseases and pests, and to analyse the spread of purple top in Ecuador together with the responses of the stakeholders. We review 108 articles on human, animal, and plant epidemics to derive enabling responses to manage the spread of emergent diseases and pests. Then, we describe the spread of purple top and stakeholders’ responses using an innovation history analysis approach. Our results show that managing epidemics calls for collaboration and coordination, communication and raising awareness, design and implementation of interventions, funding, supporting regulations and policies, research, and surveillance. We show that the complexity of the diagnosis of causal agent(s) of purple top caused uncertainty among stakeholders. Each actor experienced the purple top’s epidemic differently depending on her or his role. Poor coordination between scientists and other stakeholders, and lack of political lobby hindered the diagnosis and development of management strategies for purple top. A delayed identification, due to the complexity of the causal agent and poor coordination, can further hinder the mobilisation of necessary resources. Our results together indicate that managing epidemics requires more than identifying the causal agent(s) and vectors. We expect that the findings of this study are useful to improve preparedness for other plant disease epidemics affecting food security crops.

KEYWORD:

• Innovation history analysis
• enabling responses
• preparedness
• potato psyllid
• Zebra chip

Acknowledgments

This research was undertaken as part of the CGIAR Research Program on Roots, Tubers and Bananas (RTB). Funding support for this work was provided by the McKnight Foundation under the project 16-275. We appreciate the support of Agrocalidad in providing information and participating in discussions about managing potato purple top in Ecuador. We also would like to thank the team of FONAG for supporting the visit to the paramos and the people who shared conversations with the authors. We also thank Claire Nicklin and anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on earlier versions of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/27685241.2023.2194269

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the McKnight Foundation [16-275]