The research is underway to model the risk of plant-pathogen spread and help predict and then prevent outbreaks
Plant diseases don’t stop at national borders and miles of oceans don’t prevent their spread, either. That’s why plant disease surveillance, improved detection systems, and global predictive disease modeling are necessary to mitigate future disease outbreaks and protect the global food supply, according to a team of researchers at the McGill University in Canada, in a new commentary published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The researchers say the efforts from a wide range of scholars – so-called convergence science – are needed to prevent plant disease pandemics. That means economists, engineers, crop scientists, crop disease specialists, geneticists, geographers, data analysts, statisticians and others working together to protect crops, the farmers growing crops and the people fed by those crops.
The research is underway to model the risk of plant-pathogen spread and help predict and then prevent outbreaks, they report in the paper. Modeling and forecasting disease spread can help mobilize mitigation strategies more precisely to stop pandemics.
Global plant disease outbreaks are increasing in frequency and threaten the global food supply, the researchers say. Mean losses to major food crops such as wheat, rice and maize ranged from 21 per cent to 30 per cent due to plant pests and diseases, according to a paper published in 2019.
