ACADEMIA Letters

Impact of Climate Change on Pests and Disease Incidence

on Agricultural Crops: A Global Prospective
Muhammad Yasin, Department of Entomology, Faculty of Agriculture and
Environment, The Islamia University of Bahawalpur 63100, Pakistan
Abdul Rehman, Department of Agronomy, Faculty of Agriculture and Environment,
The Islamia University of Bahawalpur 63100, Pakistan

Introduction
The global climate change have been exerting both bottom-up and top-down effects on the di-
tropic interactions between crops and insects, and pathogens by means of certain physiological
changes especially related to host-suitability and nutritional status. It is an important driven
force of abundance and distribution of insect pests and pathogen of agricultural importance.
It can affect the population size, survival rate and geographical distribution of pests; and the
intensity, development and geographical distribution of diseases. Moreover, invasion of new
insect-pests is also a major problem with changing climate which can cause significant losses
to the crops and adversely affect the global agriculture (Paini et al., 2016).

Role of environmental factors

Temperature and rainfall are the big drivers of shifts in how and where pests and diseases
spread. In general, an increase in temperature and precipitation levels favors the growth and
distribution of most pest species by providing a warm and humid environment and provid-
ing necessary moisture for their growth. When average global surface temperatures increase
by 2 °C, the median increase in yield losses owing to pest pressure is 46, 19, and 31% for

Academia Letters, October 2021 ©2021 by the authors — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Muhammad Yasin, yasin.entomologist@gmail.com

Citation: Yasin, M., Rehman, A. (2021). Impact of Climate Change on Pests and Disease Incidence on
Agricultural Crops: A Global Prospective. Academia Letters, Article 3667.
https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3667.
1
wheat, rice, and maize, respectively, bringing total estimated losses to 59, 92, and 62 met-
ric megatons per year. Crop diseases also following a similar pattern, particularly when it
comes to pathogens like plant pathogenic fungi. Research shows that since 1960, crop pests
and diseases have been moving at an average of 3 km a year in the direction of the earth’s
north and south poles as temperatures increase. It is predicted that a 1 ºC rise in temperature
would enable speed 200 km northwards (in northern hemisphere) or 40 m upward (in alti-
tude). This may lead to increased abundance of tropical insect species and sudden outbreaks
of insect-pests can wipe out certain crop species entirely (Kannan and James 2009).

Effect of temperature on phenology

Increased global temperature will also influence the phenology of insects and pathogens in-
cluding early arrival of insect pests and diseases in their agricultural habitats and emergence
time of various insect pests. This will require early and more frequent application of pesti-
cides to reduce the pest damage. Moreover, with increased temperatures, it is expected that
insects will pass through their developmental stages faster and become adults earlier due to
high metabolic rates and fast consumption of stored nutrients. Therefore, expected responses
in insects could include an advance in the timing of larval and adult emergence and an increase
in the length of the flight period. It has been estimated that with a 2 ºC temperature increase,
insects might experience one to five additional life cycles per season (Yamamura and Kiritani
1998). The quicker the life cycle, the higher will be the population of pests and more dam-
age to the crops. High temperature accelerate the evaporation process in plants, thus, water
stressed plants at times may result in increased insect populations and pest outbreaks. This
will affect the crop yield and availability of food grains and threaten food security. When such
insects and disease outbreaks occur, the impacts can be devastating. In the 1840s, the Irish
potato famine, caused by the fungal disease late blight, killed around one million people and
caused another million to emigrate.

Contribution of greenhouse gasses

Elevated level of greenhouse gasses particularly Co2 could also affect pests and pathogens in-
directly, by modifying plant chemistry, physiology and nutritional content, hence weakening
its defenses. Generally, Co2 elevation increases the carbon to nitrogen ratio due to accumula-
tion of non-structural carbohydrates (soluble sugars and starch) of plant tissues thereby reduc-
ing the nutritional quality for protein limited insects diluting the nitrogen content by 15-25%
in the tissues (Coviella et al., 1999). The expected reactions from herbivores to the increase

Academia Letters, October 2021 ©2021 by the authors — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Muhammad Yasin, yasin.entomologist@gmail.com

Citation: Yasin, M., Rehman, A. (2021). Impact of Climate Change on Pests and Disease Incidence on
Agricultural Crops: A Global Prospective. Academia Letters, Article 3667.
https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3667.
2
in carbon to nitrogen ratio are compensatory feeding, concentrations of defensive chemicals
in plants and competition between pest species. Insects may accelerate their food intake to
compensate for reduced leaf nitrogen content (Holton et al., 2003). These can increase the
damage caused by many insects, who will consume more leaves to meet their metabolic re-
quirements of nitrogen, thus, any attack will be more severe. Higher temperatures coupled
with elevated Co2 level will mean that more numbers of pests will survive the winter season.
For pathogens, elevated Co2 will help in easier over-wintering while higher temperatures will
favor thermophilic fungi.

Loss of host plant resistance

Changes in climate greatly influence the expression of the host plant resistance as they are
dependent upon the climatic factor like sunlight, temperature, air pollution, soil moisture etc.
Therefore, alter the interactions between insect pests and their host plants. Under stressed
conditions, the defense system of the plant become weak that resultantly leads to the pest
outbreak. Rise in the global temperature in tropical countries like Pakistan and India faced
increased water stress that caused severe yield losses in sorghum due to breakdown of resis-
tance against midge Stenodiplosis sorghicola (Coq.) and spotted stem borer, Chilo partellus
Swinhoe (Sharma et al., 2005). Elevated Co2 decreases the induction of jasmonic acid and
ethylene related transcripts (lox7, aos, hpl, and acc1) in soybean plants causing decreased
accumulation of defenses (polyphenol oxidase, protease inhibitors, etc.) over time compared
to plants grown under ambient conditions, suggesting that Co2 exposure might have resulted
in increased insect damage (Skendžić et al., 2021). Drought stress, elevated Co2 level and
high temperature has been found exerting negative impacts on the toxin proteins production
in transgenic plants, hence leading to decreased resistance to insect pests (Dong and Li 2007).
The United Nations has declared the year 2020 as the International Year of Plant Health, em-
phasizing the importance of raising global awareness on how “protecting plant health can help
end hunger, reduce poverty, protect biodiversity and the environment, and boost economic de-
velopment. Keeping in view the above constraints we need to decide the future line of research
for combating the pest problems under changing climatic conditions.

Conclusion
There are wide range of insect pests and diseases associated with agricultural crops. The
severity of insect pests and disease incidence is increasing due to the variability in climatic
factors such as increasing temperature, elevated level of Co2, changing rainfall and relative

Academia Letters, October 2021 ©2021 by the authors — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Muhammad Yasin, yasin.entomologist@gmail.com

Citation: Yasin, M., Rehman, A. (2021). Impact of Climate Change on Pests and Disease Incidence on
Agricultural Crops: A Global Prospective. Academia Letters, Article 3667.
https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3667.
3
humidity patterns, and other factors. Changing climate favours some insects and diseases, and
inhibits others, while impacting their growth, phenology, development, abundance, diversity
and distribution.Overall, it is accepted that increase in pests and disease outbreaks has been
enhanced and expanded their geographic distribution (especially northward). Invasion of ex-
otic pests and diseases in new areas has increased and chances of insect transmitted diseases
in plants are also increasing over time. Moreover, effectiveness of biological control agents
could be reduced due to changing climate and challenging for future pest control programs.
If we are not able to mitigate the effect of climate change, then we will face huge economic
losses and risk of human food security. The need of the hour is to reduce the effect of climate
change and adopt climate resilient agriculture technologies in IPM programs for pest control.

References
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herbivore-parasitoid interactions: effects of elevated CO2, O3, and genotype. Oecolo-
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Academia Letters, October 2021 ©2021 by the authors — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Muhammad Yasin, yasin.entomologist@gmail.com

Citation: Yasin, M., Rehman, A. (2021). Impact of Climate Change on Pests and Disease Incidence on
Agricultural Crops: A Global Prospective. Academia Letters, Article 3667.
https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3667.
4
 • Skendžić, S., Zovko, M., Živković, I.P., Lešić, V., & Lemić, D. (2021). The Impact of
climate change on agricultural insect pests. Insects, 12, 440.

Academia Letters, October 2021 ©2021 by the authors — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Muhammad Yasin, yasin.entomologist@gmail.com

Citation: Yasin, M., Rehman, A. (2021). Impact of Climate Change on Pests and Disease Incidence on
Agricultural Crops: A Global Prospective. Academia Letters, Article 3667.
https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3667.
5