Weather-based risk periods for DON and Alternaria toxin formation in Estonian small grain cereals: historical frequency and climate-scenario projections — data and code

This repository contains processed (derived) datasets and analysis code underlying the manuscript "Weather-based risk periods for DON and Alternaria toxin formation in Estonian small grain cereals: historical frequency and climate-scenario projections" (Karron & Saue, METK — Centre of Estonian Rural Research and Knowledge). The study assesses which weather conditions are favourable for the development of two major mycotoxins — deoxynivalenol (DON) and Alternaria toxins — in Estonian small grain cereals, and how the frequency of these conditions may change under future climate scenarios. The analysis is based on 33 years (1991–2023) of daily weather data from six Estonian meteorological stations, combined with crop phenological (BBCH growth-stage) observations from 283 sites (2016–2023). A literature-informed weather-favourability index was developed for DON/Fusarium risk, and individual meteorological indicators were evaluated separately for Alternaria. Future changes were assessed under RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 climate scenarios (2041–2070, 2071–2100) using a delta-change approach, combined with a sensitivity analysis for phenological timing and relative humidity. Repository contents: /data — ten CSV files containing all result tables and figure-underlying data reported in the manuscript (historical and projected weather-favourability frequencies, Alternaria meteorological conditions, sensitivity analyses, precipitation-intensity diagnostics, and static reference tables for the phenological windows, index thresholds and climate perturbations used) /code — a single, validated Python analysis script that reproduces all result tables from the cleaned daily meteorological series This repository does not include raw meteorological or phenological data; see the README for information on how to request these from their original sources (Estonian Environment Agency; METK phenological monitoring network). All result tables in this repository have been checked against the values reported in the manuscript and match to the reported precision. Keywords: mycotoxins, deoxynivalenol, DON, Alternaria, Fusarium, cereals, Estonia, climate change, weather risk, agroclimatology, phenology