Mapping Worldwide Environmental Suitability for Artemisia annua L.

Fangyu Ding,Xiaobo Zhang,Di Wang,Shuai Chen,Tian Ma,Luqi Huang,Dong Jiang,Qian Wang,Mengmeng Hao

doi:10.3390/su12041309

Abstract

Artemisinin, which is isolated from the naturally occurring plant Artemisia annua L. (A. annua; Qinghao in traditional Chinese medicine), is considered to be the active ingredient in the most effective treatment for malaria. Current malaria eradication plans rely on an affordable and robust supply of artemisinin, resulting in the demand to expand the area of A. annua under cultivation. However, there is no reliable assessment of the potential land resources suitable for planting A. annua at the global scale. By explicitly incorporating the assembled contemporary occurrence records of A. annua with various spatial predictor variables, a species distribution modelling procedure was adopted to produce the first global environmental suitability map for A. annua with high geographic detail (5 × 5 km2). The estimated map reveals that the total amount of potential land resources suitable for planting A. annua is approximately 1496.56 million hectares, mainly distributed in Asia (516.50 million hectares), Europe (378.82 million hectares), North America (354.56 million hectares) and South America (172.01 million hectares). The relationships between the relevant variables and A. annua were explored, and these illustrated that the most noteworthy predictor variables were meteorological factors, followed by solar radiation factors, soil factors and topographical factors. The map provides a rigorous environmental niche baseline to support the reasonable expansion of the A. annua cultivation area.

Highlights

Malaria is a life-threatening parasitic disease present in vast regions of sub-Saharan Africa, South East Asia, the Americas, the Western Pacific and the Eastern Mediterranean which caused an estimated 219 million infection cases in 87 countries and approximately 435,000 deaths worldwide in 2017 [1,2]
The present study aims to analyze marginal effect plots and the relative contribution of related environmental variables based on the assembled contemporary occurrence records of A. annua and a formal species distribution modelling procedure
The meteorological factors, accounting for 78.88% of the variation explained by the ensemble BRT models, were the most important predictor variables in the model, followed by the solar radiation factors (RC 15.16%), soil factors (RC 3.04%) and topographical factors (RC 2.92%)

Summary

Introduction

Malaria is a life-threatening parasitic disease present in vast regions of sub-Saharan Africa, South East Asia, the Americas, the Western Pacific and the Eastern Mediterranean which caused an estimated 219 million infection cases in 87 countries and approximately 435,000 deaths worldwide in 2017 [1,2]. (A. annua), have served as effective first-line antimalarial drugs that have received global attention due to the artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) since the 1990s [7,8]. Research on the environmentally suitable distribution of A. annua has received increasing attention. Huang et al developed a geographic information system (GIS) approach to assess the potential distribution of A. annua, indicating that the bioclimatically suitable habitats were mainly distributed in the area of Guizhou, Chongqing, Hunan and Hubei [11]. Zhang et al adopted a maximum entropy model to estimate the potential ecologically suitable areas for A. annua, showing that the more ecologically suitable areas were mainly distributed in parts of Eastern Sichuang, Guangxi, parts of Western Yunnan, Guizhou, and parts of Western Chongqing [12]. There is no reliable assessment of the potential land resources suitable for planting A. annua at a global scale

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