Research and Development Priorities in the Face of Climate Change and Rapidly Evolving Pests

Abstract

Agriculture faces the challenge of meeting increasing food demands whilst simultaneously satisfying ever stringent sustainability goals. Taken together with the ever increasing rate of integrated globalisation and other anthropogenic impacts, this challenge is further complicated by climate change. Climate change is indeed increasingly recognised as a considerable risk to agriculture in the European Union, particularly with respect to direct impacts on crop production and yield stability. A major impact threat is the further risk from new and emerging invasive alien species, and potential novel pathogenically aggressive adaptations in existing indigenous pests and pathogens, which, hitherto, have been managed with conventional practices and approaches.

The introduction of several exotic pests such as Tuta absoluta, Bemisia tabaci, and Bactrocera fruit flies in Europe points out the changing trend in pathogen adaptation to new regions due to climate change thereby threatening the viability of European crop production. Likewise, slight increases in temperature heighten disease severity caused by indigenous pathogens such as Leptosphaeria maculans, Fusarium graminearum and Dickeya spp. on oilseed rape, cereals and potato, respectively in Europe. Over the last century, there has been an increased global mean temperature by 0.74 °C which is projected to rise by 3.4 °C by the end of twenty-first century. This raise in temperature has resulted in increased pest pressure in European agriculture through a shift from lower latitudes pole-wards and from lower to higher altitudes. In view of this, the development of anticipatory adaptive strategies, resulting in more resilient cropping systems, is the only alternative to tackle evolving pests under changing climate in order to ensure food security for a global population estimated to reach 9.6 billion by 2050.

The views expressed by Stephen R. H. Langrell are purely his own and may not in any circumstances be regarded as stating an official position of the European Commission.