Impacts on Insect and Mite Pests - Climate Resilient Agriculture for Ensuring Food Security - page 144

mental and socioeconomic impacts on rural
farmers whose livelihoods depend directly on the
agriculture and other climate-sensitive sectors.
Dealing with climate change is really a tedious
task owing to its complexity, uncertainty, unpre-
dictability, and differential impacts over time and
place. Understanding insect pests and their natu-
ral enemies is an important and challenging topic
ahead in agricultural research. Impacts of climate
change on crop production mediated through
changes in populations of serious insect pests
need to be given careful attention for planning
and devising adaptation and mitigation strategies
for future pest management programs.

7.21 Conclusions

Global warming and climate change will have
serious consequences on diversity and abundance
of arthropods and the extent of losses due to
insect pests, which will impact both crop produc-
tion and food security. Prediction of changes in
geographical distribution and population dynam-
ics of insect pests will be useful to adapt the pest
management strategies to mitigate the adverse
effects of climate change on crop production.
Pest outbreaks might occur more frequently, par-
ticularly during extended periods of drought, fol-
lowed by heavy rainfall. Some of the components
of pest management such as host plant resistance,
biopesticides, natural enemies, and synthetic
chemicals will be rendered less effective as a
result of increase in temperatures and UV radia-
tion and decrease in relative humidity. Climate
change will also alter the interactions between
the insect pests and their host plants. As a result,
some of the cultivars that are resistant to insect
pests may exhibit susceptible reaction under
global warming. Adverse effects of climate
change on the activity and effectiveness of natural
enemies will be a major concern in future pest
management programs. Rate of insect multiplica-
tion might increase with an increase in CO 2 and
temperature. Therefore, there is a need to have a
concerted look at the likely effects of climate
change on crop protection and devise appropriate
measures to mitigate the effects of climate change
on food security.
Serious consequences of climate change on
diversity and abundance of insect pests and the
extent of crop losses and food security for the
twenty-fi rst century are the major challenges for
humankind in years to come. Being a tropical
country, India is more challenged with impacts of
looming climate change. In India, pest damage
varies in different agroclimatic regions across the
country mainly due to differential impacts of abi-
otic factors such as temperature, humidity, and
rainfall. This entails the intensifi cation of yield
losses due to potential changes in crop diversity
and increased incidence of insect pests due to
changing climate. It will have serious environ-

References

Aerts M, Cockrell P, Nuessly G, Raid R, Schueneman T,
Seal, D (1999) Crop profi le for corn (sweet) in Florida.
Available from http://www.ipmcenters.org/CropProfi les/
docs/FLcorn-sweet.html

Ainsworth EA, Beier C, Calfapietra C, Ceulemans R,
Durand-Tardif M, Farquhar GD, Godbold DL,
Hendrey GR, Hickler T, Kaduk J, Karnosky DF,
Kimball BA, Körner CH, Koornneef M, Lafarge T,
Leakey ADB, Lewin KF, Long SP, Manderscheid R,
Mcneil DL, Mies TA, Miglietta F, Morgan JA, Nagy J,
Norby RJ, Norton RM, Percy KE, Rogers A, Soussana
JF, Stitt M, Weigel HJ, White JW (2008) Next genera-
tion of elevated CO 2 experiments with crops: a critical
investment for feeding the future world. Plant Cell
Environ 31(9):1317-1324
Altieri MA, Ponti L, Nicholls C (2005) Enhanced pest
management through soil health: toward a
belowground habitat management strategy.

Biodynamics (Summer):33-40
Andrew NR, Hughes L (2005) Diversity and assemblage
structure of phytophagous Hemiptera along a latitudi-
nal gradient: predicting the potential impacts of cli-
mate change. Glob Ecol Biogeogr 14:249-262
Awmack CS, Harrington R (2000) Elevated CO2 affects
the interactions between aphid pests and host plant
fl owering. Agric For Entomol 2(1):57-61
Awmack CS, Woodcock CM, Harrington R (1997)
Climate change may increase vulnerability of aphids
to natural enemies. Ecol Entomol 22:366-368
Bale JS, Hayward SAL (2010) Insect overwintering in a
changing climate. J Exp Biol 213:980-994
Bale JS, Masters GJ, Hodkinson ID, Awmack C, Bezemer
TM, Brown VK, Butterfi eld J, Alan Buse A, John C,
Coulson JC, John Farrar J, John EG, Good JEG,
Harrington R, Hartley H, Jones TH, Lindroth RL,
Press MC, Symrnioudis I, Watt AD, Whittaker JB
(2002) Herbivory in global climate change research: