Prediction of a geographical shift in the prevalence of rice stripe virus disease transmitted by the small brown planthopper, Laodelphax striatellus(Fallen)(Hemiptera: Delphacidae), under global warming.

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Global warming may affect crop damage caused by insect pest, by changing the degree of synchronization between pest occurrence and the susceptible stage of crops. The epidemiological system of rice stripe virus disease (RSV disease) transmitted by the small brown planthopper, Laodelphax striatellus (Fallen), is greatly influenced by synchronization, because the susceptible stage for virus infection is within several weeks after transplanting. We calculated how the area potentially vulnerable to RSV disease will change under future global warming by using the results of the Global Climate Model (GCM) experiments reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. For simplicity, assuming that rice seedlings are transplanted from May to June, we made a map, in which the number of generations of the small brown planthopper on June 1 was plotted by calculating the effective cumulative temperature. The influence of solar radiation was also considered in this calculation. We judged that the area located near the boundary of generations is potentially vulnerable to disease prevalence, because planthoppers are in the adult stage there. Generation maps indicated that the Tohoku and Hokuriku districts, which are major districts of rice production in Japan, might be potentially vulnerable to disease infection under future global warming.