Assessing the global burden of pathogens and pests on major food crops : poster

Crop pathogens and pests (P&Ps) reduce the yield and quality of agricultural production. They cause a substantial economic losses and reduce food security at household, national and global levels. Quantitative information on crop losses by P&Ps is hard to obtain, sparse, seldom standardized, and is difficult to compile and compare across crops, agroecosystems and regions in the world. To address this, we conducted a novel expert based assessment of crop health to provide, for the first time, numerical estimates of yield losses on an individual P&P basis for five major staple crops globally and in food security hotspots. Our results document losses associated with 137 P&Ps – a significant fraction of total P&Ps associated with wheat, rice, maize, potato, and soybean worldwide. Our yield loss estimates suggest that the highest losses are associated with food deficit regions with fast growing populations and frequently with emerging or re-emerging pests and diseases. Our assessment highlights very large differences in impacts among crop P&Ps and underlines stark contrast among the world's food security hotspots. The crop loss assessment study we report is only one of the many critical steps (modelling, mapping) required to generate a meaningful assessment of the - widely ignored - impacts of crop pathogens and pests, and policies for management.