Problems, challenges and future of plant disease management: from an ecological point of view

Abstract

Plant disease management faces ever-growing challenges due to: (i) increasing demands for total, safe and diverse foods to support the booming global population and its improving living standards; (ii) reducing production potential in agriculture due to competition for land in fertile areas and exhaustion of marginal arable lands; (iii) deteriorating ecology of agro-ecosystems and depletion of natural resources; and (iv) increased risk of disease epidemics resulting from agricultural intensification and monocultures. Future plant disease management should aim to strengthen food security for a stable society while simultaneously safeguarding the health of associated ecosystems and reducing dependency on natural resources. To achieve these multiple functionalities, sustainable plant disease management should place emphases on rational adaptation of resistance, avoidance, elimination and remediation strategies individually and collectively, guided by traits of specific host-pathogen associations using evolutionary ecology principles to create environmental (biotic and abiotic) conditions favorable for host growth and development while adverse to pathogen reproduction and evolution.