The global spread of crop pests and pathogens

By D. Bebber, T. Holmes, Sarah J. Gurr. 2014

440 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Aim To describe the patterns and trends in the spread of crop pests and pathogens around the world, and determine the socioeconomic, environmental and biological factors underlying the rate and degree of redistribution of crop-destroying organisms. Location Global. Methods Current country- and state-level distributions of 1901 pests and pathogens and historical observation dates for 424 species were compared with potential distributions based upon distributions of host crops. The degree of ‘saturation’, i.e. the fraction of the potential distribution occupied, was related to pest type, host range, crop production, climate and socioeconomic variables using linear models. Results More than one-tenth of all pests have reached more than half the countries that grow their hosts. If current trends continue, many important crop-producing countries will be fully saturated with pests by the middle of the century. While dispersal increases with host range overall, fungi have the narrowest host range but are the most widely dispersed group. The global dispersal of some pests has been rapid, but pest assemblages remain strongly regionalized and follow the distributions of their hosts. Pest assemblages are significantly correlated with socioeconomics, climate and latitude. Tropical staple crops, with restricted latitudinal ranges, tend to be more saturated with pests and pathogens than temperate staples with broad latitudinal ranges. We list the pests likely to be the most invasive in coming years. Main conclusions Despite ongoing dispersal of crop pests and pathogens, the degree of biotic homogenization of the globe remains moderate and regionally constrained, but is growing. Fungal pathogens lead the global invasion of agriculture, despite their more restricted host range. Climate change is likely to influence future distributions. Improved surveillance would reveal greater levels of invasion, particularly in developing countries.

Subfields: Ecology, Insect Science, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6fb4e73c84f674cb6faa968cabe9228b9d020dde

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Citations in the corpus

Increasing numbers and intercontinental spread of invasive insects on eucalypts (2016, positive): “Biological invasions pose one of the greatest threats to global biodiversity as well as to the sustainable production of food and fibre for the needs of a growing world population (Pimentel et al. 2001; Wingfield et al. 2008; Flood 2010; Wingfield et al. 2011; Bebber et al. 2014a).”
Abiotic and biotic factors affecting crop seed germination and seedling emergence: a conceptual framework (2018, background): “Extreme climatic events due to climate change bring about many unexpected and more frequent biotic and abiotic stress situations (Bebber et al. 2014; Trenberth et al. 2014).”
The proportion of soil-borne pathogens increases with warming at the global scale (2020, background): “Our analyses further indicated that MAT was the most important factor to influence the STE (unitless) –1.5 –1.0 –0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 Elevation Spatial dissimilarity MAT TSEA MAP PSEA Grassland Forest Plant cover Soil pH Clay + silt Soil C P > 0.05 P 0.05 Shrublands (15) Other grasslands (4”
Climate change, food security and mycotoxins: Do we know enough? (2017, background): “This will have profound impacts on pests and diseases and ultimately yields (Gregory et al., 2009; Bebber et al., 2013; Bebber et al., 2014; Bebber and Gurr, 2015).”
Quantitative and qualitative phenotyping of disease resistance of crops by hyperspectral sensors: seamless interlocking of phytopathology, sensors, and machine learning is needed! (2019, background): “Furthermore, globalization, human activities and climate change promote favorable conditions for emerging pathogens [7,8].”