Research and Development Priorities in the Face of Climate Change and Rapidly Evolving Pests

Summary

Agriculture faces the challenge of meeting increasing food demands whilst simultaneously satisfying ever stringent sustainability goals. Taken together with the ever increasing rate of integrated globalisation and other anthropogenic impacts, this challenge is further complicated by climate change. Climate change is indeed increasingly recognised as a considerable risk to agriculture in the European Union, particularly with respect to direct impacts on crop production and yield stability. A major impact threat is the further risk from new and emerging invasive alien species, and potential novel pathogenically aggressive adaptations in existing indigenous pests and pathogens, which, hitherto, have been managed with conventional practices and approaches.