Pest and diseases and climate change

Background

Changes in mean temperature and precipitation patterns influence pest and pathogens incidence and distribution. Climate change is therefore likely to modify the crop and livestock disease spectrum in some regions and turn pathogens or pests, considered unimportant today, into potential new threats in the future. Evidence on the measured climate change on crops, livestock and their associated pests and pathogens is starting to be documented; however studies are still scarce and scattered. It is essential to better understand such complex interactions and to achieve a more mechanistic inclusion of pest and diseases (P&D) effects in crop and livestock models and early warning systems. Taking up this challenge is the crucial step forward towards more realistic predictions of crop production and to allow a more efficient assistance in the development of robust adaptation strategies and food security policies.

Objectives

To assess the state of knowledge and document promising approaches to understand the sensitivity of crops and livestock pest and disease dynamics to current climate variability as well as its long term expected changes (prevalence, pressure, evolution), including impacts under future climate scenarios. 

It will namely:

• Make an inventory of on-going work, tools and approaches currently used to address this issue
• Identify relevant initiatives and institutions on which CCAFS research could build
• Point out major researchable issues, current knowledge and methodological gaps, and
• Provide a synthesis of recommendations including a framework for integrating crops and livestock pest and disease analysis with modeling.

Outputs

• A review paper on short- and long-term expected changes in P&D dynamics, available approaches for modeling and understanding their impacts, and a strategic research framework for the future (Submitted to Agriculture and Forest Meteorology).  
• A Strategic paper that would enable CCAFS to prepare an agenda of priority research areas and build a coherent research plan for coming years, and specifically: 

1. to Identify needs, gaps and challenges in the area of climate change and pests and diseases
2. to outline possible directions for CCAFS in this arena by providing a synthesis of recommendations, with emphasis on opportunities and potential partners for concrete actions, in the short and medium term.

Partners

This major methodological/institutional scoping study is being carried out by a multidisciplinary team of 5 experts from the Universities of Florence (Italy), Oxford (U.K) and Missouri (U.S.A) and the International Potato Center (CIP) under the leadership of Kansas State University 

Timeframe

December 2010 to June 2011