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Agricultural intensification and climate change have increased the threat from weeds.

ABSTRACT: Weeds represent a significant threat to crop yields and global food security. We analysed data on weed competition from the world's longest running agricultural experiment to ask whether potential yield losses from weeds have increased in response to management and environmental change since the advent of the Green Revolution in the 1960s. On plots where inorganic nitrogen fertiliser has been applied, potential yield losses from weeds have consistently increased since 1969. This was explained by a warming climate, measured as air temperature averaged over the growing season for the weeds, and a shift towards shorter crop cultivars. Weeds also reduced yield proportionally more on plots with higher rates of nitrogen which had higher yields when weeds were controlled; the relative benefit of herbicides was, therefore, proportional to potential crop yield. Reducing yield losses from weed competition is increasingly challenging because of the evolution of herbicide resistance. Our results demonstrate that weeds now represent a greater inherent threat to crop production than before the advent of herbicides and integrated, sustainable solutions to weed management are urgently needed to protect the high yield potential of modern crop genotypes.

SUBMITTER: Storkey J

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8252568 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Agricultural intensification and climate change have increased the threat from weeds.

Storkey Jonathan J Mead Andrew A Addy John J MacDonald Andrew J AJ

Global change biology 20210323 11

Weeds represent a significant threat to crop yields and global food security. We analysed data on weed competition from the world's longest running agricultural experiment to ask whether potential yield losses from weeds have increased in response to management and environmental change since the advent of the Green Revolution in the 1960s. On plots where inorganic nitrogen fertiliser has been applied, potential yield losses from weeds have consistently increased since 1969. This was explained by ...[more]

PMID: 33759302

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Project description:BackgroundThe definition of wildlife health continues to expand with the recognition that health is more than the absence of disease. Practitioners are working to integrate concepts such as vulnerability, adaptation, and resilience into wildlife health research, surveillance, and management actions. Here, we performed a scoping review to identify scholarly articles from 2008 onwards with a focus on climate change impacts on wildlife health. Searches were conducted in Web of Science, Zoological Record, Scopus, Ovid CAB Abstracts, and ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. Articles were screened for relevance and fed into an AI-based thematic analysis that identified recurring themes across the literature. Each theme was manually reviewed and refined to help describe the scope and depth of existing literature, identify key themes, and assess potential knowledge gaps.ResultsIn total, 2,249 citations were retrieved of which 372 were included in further analysis after applying a set of inclusion/exclusion criteria. On closer inspection, 30.4% (113/372) of the papers were focused on climate-associated impacts on vector distribution. For this reason, two thematic analyses were performed, one which only included the subset of papers focused on climate change and vector distribution (n = 113) and another including the remaining papers focused on climate-associated impacts on wildlife health (n = 259). Amongst the subset of papers focused on vector distribution, top themes included concepts related to pathogen transmission dynamics, human/public health, and pathogen prevalence, while health papers focused on concepts related to increasing temperatures, species home ranges and distribution, and changing environmental variables.ConclusionsA large number of the papers retrieved in the literature search focused on how climate change impacts the distribution and abundance of host, vector, and pathogen species, remaining disease-centric in their approach. Papers including themes related to management actions were limited reflecting some uncertainty on how best to respond and prepare for climate change. Further discussion is needed on how wildlife health concepts can be used to help inform on-the-ground management actions in the face of climate uncertainty, this includes the collection of baseline health data and research into health metrics that could be used as indicators of resilience at the ecosystem level.

Dataset Information

Agricultural intensification and climate change have increased the threat from weeds.

Publications

Agricultural intensification and climate change have increased the threat from weeds.

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