Modeling plant diseases under climate change: evolutionary perspectives

Abstract

Infectious plant diseases are a major threat to global agricultural productivity, economic development, and ecological integrity. There is widespread concern that these social and natural disasters caused by infectious plant diseases may escalate with climate change and computer modeling offers a unique opportu-nity to address this concern. Here, we analyze the intrinsic problems associated with current modeling strategies and highlight the need to integrate evolutionary principles into polytrophic, eco-evolutionary frameworks to improve predictions. We particularly discuss how evolutionary shifts in functional trade-offs, relative adaptability between plants and pathogens, ecosystems, and climate preferences induced by climate change may feedback to future plant disease epidemics and how technological advances can facilitate the generation and integration of this relevant knowledge for better modeling predictions.

Published in

Trends in Plant Science
2023, volume: 28, number: 5, pages: 519-526
Publisher: ELSEVIER SCIENCE LONDON

SLU Authors

• Zhan, Jiasui

  • Department of Forest Mycology and Plant Pathology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Global goals (SDG)

SDG13 Climate action

UKÄ Subject classification

Agricultural Science
Climate Research

Publication identifier

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tplants.2022.12.011

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/122176