Climate-driven insect pest outbreaks and food security risks: a review of adaptive strategies for resilient agriculture
摘要
The evolution of climate change is significantly transforming agroecosystems worldwide, leading to unprecedented shifts in crop pest populations that threaten global food security. It increases pest pressures in physiological, ecological, and evolutionary ways. Due to global warming, changes in rainfall patterns, and extreme weather events, pest metabolism speeds up, their geographic range expands, and overwintering survival improves, leading to more frequent and severe outbreaks. This review summarizes recent research on the threshold interactions between climate and pests, demonstrating that warming has already led to a 10–25% increase in crop losses due to insects in major breadbasket regions and could potentially reduce yields by up to 50% by 2050 if current trends persist. As we examine the ripple effects on staple crops, the poleward expansion of fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda), which devastated African maize fields, is not an isolated case, nor is the persistence of aphid outbreaks in temperate cereal systems. Climate-related pest pressures weaken the resilience of agricultural systems. The paper highlights adaptive management strategies, such as climate-smart integrated pest management (IPM), phenology-based surveillance, and CRISPR-engineered crop resistance. By utilizing ecological modeling and genomic innovation, and involving farmers in adaptation efforts, we outline a plan for transforming pest control in the Anthropocene. The author emphasizes that this analysis ends with an urgent call for policies that promote international coordinated action, predictive surveillance systems, and nature-positive innovations to safeguard global food systems against growing climate crises. The study offers both a warning and a practical framework for building resilient agriculture in response to climate-driven biological disruptions.