Climate change poses a threat to yields and food security worldwide, with plant diseases as one of the main risks.
Climate change poses a threat to yields and food security worldwide, with plant diseases as one of the main risks. An international team of researchers surrounding Prof. Senthold Asseng from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has now shown that further spread of the fungal disease wheat blast could reduce global wheat production by 13% until 2050. The result is dramatic for global food security.
wheat is an essential food crop. Like all plant species, it is also struggling with diseases that are spreading more rapidly compared to a few years ago because of climate change. One of these is wheat blast. In warm and humid regions, the fungus "Magnaporthe oryzae" has become a serious threat to wheat production since it was first observed in 1985. It initially spread from Brazil to neighboring countries. The first cases outside of South America occurred in Bangladesh in 2016 and in Zambia in 2018. Researchers from Germany, Mexico, Bangladesh, the USA and Brazil have now modeled for the first time how wheat blast will spread in the future.
Read more at: Technical University of Munich
Photo Credit: sulox32 via Pixabay
