Abstract
Vegetable production worldwide is constrained by pests and diseases which effects are exacerbated by climate change and variability. Greenhouse gas emissions are also increasing due to poor agricultural practices and other human activities. This will continue to have a negative impact on the prevalence of insect pests and diseases. This review focuses on the climatic factors that impact on insect pests and diseases of vegetable crops. High atmospheric temperatures and elevated carbon dioxide increases pest development, survival of pests and distribution of pest to new areas. The distribution of insect pests and diseases are not due to climate changes only but are also a result of globalisation and poor biosecurity measures at country borders. There is limited information on the distribution of pests and diseases due to globalisation in African countries. New exotic pests will continue to be introduced to countries if biosecurity measures are not improved. Future research must focus on how to manage emerging pests and diseases influenced by high temperatures and carbon dioxide and other climatic conditions which influence pest severity under smallholder farmers in the southern African regions.
Highlights
More undernourished people are found in African regions and this has remained a great challenge in the Sub-Saharan Africa (FAO, 2015)
This will remain a huge problem to farmers who depend on chemicals to manage insect pests, especially when climate change is having an impact on the biology and distribution of insect pests
This review has concluded that anthropogenic activities and some agricultural practices such as pesticide application and burning of fuels do influence greenhouse emissions resulting to climatic changes
Summary
More undernourished people are found in African regions and this has remained a great challenge in the Sub-Saharan Africa (FAO, 2015). South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa constitutes at least one billion of people who suffer from malnutrition, lacking carbohydrates, vitamins, and other micro-nutrients (Keatinge et al, 2011). Jallow et al (2017) indicated that 65% of farmers agreed that the use of chemicals for insect management is hazardous to the environment and 70.5% confirmed that pesticides can be dangerous to human health. This will remain a huge problem to farmers who depend on chemicals to manage insect pests, especially when climate change is having an impact on the biology and distribution of insect pests
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