Impact of climate change on plant diseases and management strategies: A review

Abstract

Climate change is a major environmental challenge worldwide. Over the past century, human activities have dramatically altered the Earth’s atmospheric composition, with significant consequences for the planet’s climate, biogeochemistry, ecosystems and societies. Plant diseases are already causing extensive crop losses throughout the world and these extreme weather conditions along with warmer temperature will aggravate these impacts. Change in climate also affect disease management with regard to timing, preference, and efficacy of chemical, physical, and biological measures of control and their utilization within integrated pest management strategies. Climate change is just one of the many ways in which the environment can move in the long term from disease-suppressive to disease-conducive or vice versa. Therefore, plant diseases could be even used as indicators of climate change. Climate change is indeed not only going to threaten plant health, but may in some cases enhance it estimating disease risk on a large scale is necessary for identifying research priorities, strategically orienting industry, and developing public policies for establishing measures of adaptation that will allow the maintenance of food security. A limited amount of information on the potential impacts of climate change on plant diseases is available. This overview addresses the need for review of this burgeoning literature by summarizing opinions of previous reviews and trends in recent studies on the impacts of climate change on plant health.