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Under Attack the Threat of Insects to Agriculture Is Set to Increase As the Planet Warms

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Under Attack the Threat of Insects to Agriculture Is Set to Increase As the Planet Warms AGRICULTURE AND DROUGHT OUTLOOK PATRICK FRILET/HEMIS/CORBIS PATRICK Swarms of grasshoppers and locusts have troubled scientists for hundreds of years, and the problem may be about to get even worse. CROP PESTS Under attack The threat of insects to agriculture is set to increase as the planet warms. What action can we take to safeguard our crops? BY AMY MAXMEN know if it was the heat, water loss or mites that breadth and hard numbers. This information killed the wheat,” he says, “but the crop could is increasingly important because climate ohn Stulp shakes his head as he surveys not survive the combined stress.” models predict that by the end of this century, the fields of his farm in Lamar, Colo- Dry fields infested with pests are the stuff of the hottest seasons on record today will be Jrado, which have been ravaged by the nightmares for farmers, but they also trouble the norm in many areas1 and droughts may worst drought the United States has seen for the minds of scientists. In 1665, the first issue be routine. Farmers urgently need to know over 80 years. He says he’ll be lucky to har- of one of the world’s oldest scientific journals, whether dry, insect-ridden crops reflect unu- vest a third of the 2,000 hectares of wheat he Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Soci- sual situations or expected outcomes. planted last year, and he has either sold or ety, contained a report on swarms of locusts What’s more, in order to feed the projected killed all but 3 of his 200 cattle because the devouring fields of corn. The anonymous 9 billion people who will inhabit the Earth grass they feed on never greened. “I’ve been author wrote that once the swarm’s eggs by 2050, farmers must increase their cereal through dry weather,” Stulp says, “but noth- hatch, they “produce again such a number of yields by at least 40%. An average of 15% of ing this severe.” locusts that then they do far more mischief crops worldwide are currently lost to insects, This year’s wheat crop was planted in mid- than afore, unless rains do fall, which kill both so controlling pests is crucial to achieving that 2012, but by spring 2013, Stulp’s water-stressed eggs and the insects goal. “When we think about what the major plants were spindly and covered with brown themselves.” NATURE.COM impediments are to increasing crop yield, I wheat mites. These tiny arachnids use their Despite centuries of Find some of the don’t think we spend enough time consider- syringe-like mouthparts to suck the sap from enquiry, the science latest research on ing pests,” says Joshua Tewksbury, director of the stems and leaves, leaving gaping wounds behind drought-driven crop pests here : the WWF’s Luc Hoffmann Institute in Gland, through which more fluids evaporate. “I don’t infestations lacks both go.nature.com/wwfbtc Switzerland. We need to know which insects 26 SEPTEMBER 2013 | VOL 501 | NATURE | S15 OUTLOOK AGRICULTURE AND DROUGHT eggs eat the pupa’s non-vital tissues and finally kill it while emerging from its body. ICARDA Beetle pupae normally cover themselves in feces, and Eigenbrode suspects that this fae- cal shield acts as a barrier to keep the wasp at bay. But producing faeces requires water, and Eigenbrode thinks that in extremely dry conditions, beetle larvae are unable to deploy their shields quickly enough to prevent pre- dation. The US Department of Agriculture has funded Eigenbrode’s project to test this hypothesis — part of a US$20 million grant to address the effects of climate change on US wheat production. A GROWING THREAT Farmers in the tropics lose up to 50% of their crops to pests — including insects and plant pathogens — compared with just 25–30% in Europe and the United States4. Part of the problem is that pests are a year-round problem in the tropics, and farmers are often poorer and rarely have access to safe and effective pes- ticides, robust varieties of plants and adequate irrigation. ICARDA entomologist Mustapha El-Bouhssini looks for pests on wheat crops in Morocco. Recent droughts in tropical areas are caus- ing concern that an already dire situation will be the most damaging under drought mountain pine beetle, for example, killed could worsen. In 2011 and 2012, the Horn of conditions, and where droughts will occur about 750,000 hectares of trees in 2010–11 Africa experienced its worst drought for 60 more often. in the western United States in an infestation years. Crop failures contributed to the deaths thought to be fuelled in part by droughts2. of nearly 260,000 Somalis, and millions of PEST PERFORMANCE Pines normally produce a sticky resin, which people across the region were malnourished. Droughts tend to be hot and insects generally suffocates beetles that burrow beneath the Climatologists expect droughts to become thrive in warmer weather. As the temperature bark, but water-stressed trees are unable to more frequent in other arid regions too. The rises they eat more, mate more and produce secrete enough sap. Beetles finding such trees International Panel on Climate Change pre- more young. Freezing winter temperatures emit chemical signals called pheromones that dicts that over the next 90 years, rainfall in can kill insect eggs laid the previous autumn, attract other beetles. The resulting mass pre- some parts of North Africa and western Asia and can act as a latitudinal barrier to geo- dation weakens the tree further and the beetle will decline by 30% and the average tempera- graphical spread. population multiplies. ture will increase by 4 °C. Although anecdotes such as Stulp’s are However, the relationship between insect The effects of climate change are already powerful, they mask the nuances present in populations and drought is not consistent. being seen. Mustapha El-Bouhssini, an ento- every agricultural ecosystem, including the “Sometimes there are more insects and some- mologist at the International Center for Agri- biology of different herbivorous insects, the times less,” says Claudio Gratton, an entomol- cultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), natural resilience of certain crops, and the ogist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. says that some pests once found at low levels community of predators and pathogens that One explanation for this variation, Gratton have recently become more frequent and have kill crop pests. There says, is that although insects can respond extended their ranges. In the unusually hot may be several rea- “Our goal is to positively to dry conditions for a while, even- and dry year of 2010, for example, a previously sons why the brown inform farmers tually they suffer as the plants they feed on rare pest, the barley stem gall midge, besieged wheat mites on Stulp’s deteriorate. For example, aphids can flour- Syrian farms. “Ten thousand farmers aban- farm flourished, for so they can make ish during short droughts as plant nutrients doned their fields because of these pests,” says example. Maybe the decisions based become more concentrated, but these benefits El-Bouhssini. The cereal leaf miner, which was warm winter allowed on what is right cease during prolonged droughts because of once restricted to Syria, can now be found more mite eggs to for them.” a drop in fluid pressure within the phloem of throughout neighbouring Jordan and Iraq, he hatch. Maybe the water-stressed plants3. says. And the hessian fly, a pest of wheat, has dried-out plants left the wheat more vulner- Predators of pests are also affected by crossed the Mediterranean from North Africa able than usual to predation. Or perhaps one drought. Some, such as fungi, require into Spain, Portugal and southern France. “In of the mite’s predators had not survived the humidity to survive and so are less effective my opinion,” El-Bouhssini says, “these migra- drought, leaving its prey free to roam. By fig- during droughts, whereas others fare bet- tions are the effects of climate change.” uring out which factors contribute most to a ter in dry conditions. Sanford Eigenbrode, Jürgen Kroschel, an agroecologist at the crop’s demise, agroecologists hope to identify an entomologist at the University of Idaho International Potato Center in Lima, Peru, strategies to mitigate pest damage. in Moscow, is studying parasitic wasps that says that outbreaks of potato tuber moth Droughts also make plants more nutritious attack the cereal leaf beetle, a pest of wheat are more severe in years that are hotter and to pests, as the lack of water concentrates throughout the northwestern United States. drier than usual. There is less rain to wash the the amino acids. Studies dating back to the The wasp lays its eggs in the beetle’s pupa, moths off the leaves and stems of the potato 1970s suggest that some herbivorous insects a life-cycle stage between the larva and the plant, and the dry conditions mean the larvae specifically target water-stressed plants. The adult. The wasp larvae that hatch from these can crawl down through cracks in the soil to S16 | NATURE | VOL 501 | 26 SEPTEMBER 2013 AGRICULTURE AND DROUGHT OUTLOOK burrow into the tuber. Potatoes grown traditional practices. For example, in the Peruvian mountains, about Scott Merrill, an agroecologist at the 3,800 metres above sea level, have University of Vermont in Burling- escaped these outbreaks because of ton, encourages farmers to change the cold evening temperatures. But as the way they monitor pests. Typi- the planet warms, the moth may move cally, he says, US farmers check for to higher elevations. Kroschel’s team insects on a specific day of the year predicts that over the next 40 years, and decide whether to use pesticides.
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