In the stepwise regression of varietal and agro-ecological factors against each single disease, CBB, compared to the other diseases, showed the most important relationships with r2=0.36 ( Table 4). WLS, BLS and CAD were influenced to some extent by the agro-ecological and varietal variables, while CMD, root rots and BlLS were least affected. Though the r2 value was low for the latter diseases, and thus, also the predictive strength of the entire model was weak except for CBB, partial SS2 values of individual variables were significant and allowed some interpretation.