Disease control in a food chain model supplying alternative food

Necessity to find a non-chemical method of disease control is being increasingly felt due to its eco-friendly nature. In this paper the role of alternative food as a disease controller in a disease induced predator–prey system is studied. Stability criteria and the persistence conditions for the system are derived. Bifurcation analysis is done with respect to rate of infection. The main goal of this study is to show the non-trivial consequences of providing alternative food in a disease induced predator–prey system. Numerical simulation results illustrate that there exists a critical infection rate above which disease free system cannot be reached in absence of alternative food whereas supply of suitable alternative food makes the system disease free up to certain infection level. We have computed the disease free regions in various parametric planes. This study is aimed to introduce a new non-chemical method for controlling disease in a predator–prey system.