As the proportion of populations going hungry in parts of Asia and Africa continues to rise, so preventing the reduction of harvests of cereal crops due to fungal diseases, remains a top challenge for governments and food agencies around the world.
Two new publications from member of Epidemiology and Modelling in the Department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge, provide a global overview of the research behind the development of wheat disease early warning systems and explore how advancements in these technologies can help to increase resilience in production regions in sub-Saharan Africa and S.E. Asia.
Please find a summary of both publications here and see below for links to read the articles in full.
Gilligan C. (2024) Developing predictive models and early warning systems for invading pathogens: Wheat rusts. Annual Review of Phytopathology, 62:8.1-8.25 doi.org/10.1146/annurev-phyto-121423-041956
Smith, J. W., Al Faisal, A., Hodson, D., Baidya, S., Bhatta, M., Thapa, D., Basnet, R., Thurston, W., Krupnik, T.J., Gilligan, C. A. (2024) Advancing crop disease early warning in South Asia by complementing expert surveys with internet media scraping. Climate Resilience and Sustainability; 3:e78. https://doi.org/10.1002/cli2.78