Plant disease outbreaks have caused massive food shortages and famines over the years. It poses a major threat to food security because they can damage crops, thus reducing the availability and access to food, increasing the cost of food. Each year an estimated 10-16 percent of global harvest is lost to plant diseases. Most of the crops are subjected to diseases both in the field and post-harvest by a number of major groups of pathogens. New plant diseases potentially threaten staple crops around the world giving rise to broad scale starvation in many parts of the globe. Additionally, disasters and transboundary diseases pose an enormous threat to food safety and security. Therefore, plant protection in general and the protection of crops against plant diseases in particular, have an obvious role to play in meeting the growing demand for food quality and quantity.
Shaik Reshma
Dept. of Plant Pathology, College of Agriculture, Rajendranagar, Professor Jayashankar Telangana State Agricultural University, Hyderabad, Telangana (500 030), India
Shaik Ameer Basha*
Gali Uma Devi
Venuturla Bharathi
Reshma, S., Basha, S.A., Devi, G.U., Bharathi, V., 2022. Plant Diseases - A global challenge to food security. Biotica Research Today 4(6), 438-443.
Banik, D., 2016. The hungry nation: food policy and food politics in India. Food Ethics 1, 29-45.
Garcia, S.N., Osburn, B.I., Jay-Russell, M.T., 2020. One health for food safety, food security, and sustainable food production. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems 4, 1-9.
Savary, S., Willocquet, L., Pethybridge, S.J., Esker, P., McRoberts, N., Nelson, A., 2019. The global burden of pathogens and pests on major food crops. Nature Ecology & Evolution 3(3), 430-439.
Strange, R.N., Scott, P.R., 2005. Plant disease: A threat to global food security. Annual Review of Phytopathology 43, 83-116.