Climate change can cause plant pathogens to infect crops at higher rates, scientists say

Climate change may pose an increased risk for crops to become infected with pathogens, which could severely affect global food security.

The availability of food and how crops will fare as a result of climate change has long been of interest to environmental researchers, but scientists are now finding other threats to food supplies that can severely impact global food security. Climate change may pose an increased risk for crops to become infected with pests and pathogens, leaving the yields inedible and risking quantities of the world's food supply, according to a study published Thursday in Nature Climate Change. Researchers at the University of Exeter in England studied models for the production of four major commodity crops -- maize, wheat, soybean and rice -- as well as eight temperate and tropical crops, to predict how the crops would respond to future climate scenarios. The researchers found that, overall, the yield of the crops will increase at high latitudes, such as North America and parts of Europe and Asia. However, the findings also suggest that risk of infection from 80 fungal and oomycete, or fungal-like, pathogens will increase at high latitudes as temperatures increase, according to the paper.