Climate Change Impact on Plant Pathogen Emergence: Artificial Intelligence (AI) Approach

Food is among the basic necessities of human life, and over the last decade global food supplies are facing severe challenge in form of growing population, increasing disease infestation, resource constraint, and climate change. At the same time global food demands are expected to increase by around 35–56% by the middle of the century. All this forecasts a dark image for global food security in coming decades. Plant pathogens are responsible for significant losses in major crops including wheat, rice, maize, soybean, and potato (up to 41% losses). In addition to this, the challenge of climate change is making things even worse as fluctuation in climatic patterns result in breeding and invasion of unorthodox pathogens and insects (collectively termed as pests) which can lead to major reduction in crop yields. Early detection and forecasting of these evolving pathogens is essential for disease management and to avoid severe infestations. Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) technology have the potential to deal with many of these challenges; massive weather forecasting and imagery dataset can be collected worldwide and analyzed using deep-AI models. This will ultimately provide real-time information regarding changing spatial-temporal dynamics of pests and alert policymakers, producers, and businesses to develop integrated strategy for mitigation of evolving pest infestation.