ST. PAUL, Minn. — As climate change intensifies, agriculture faces one of its greatest challenges yet: the looming risk of climate-induced crop loss. Farmers worldwide are already seeing crops fail under extreme droughts, heat waves, and changing soil conditions. These abiotic stressors—non-living environmental factors like drought, heat, and soil salinity—are not just lowering yields.
They are also making plants more vulnerable to disease, triggering a chain reaction that threatens global food security. Scientists warn that without urgent innovation in crop resilience, we could face devastating food shortages, rising prices, and economic instability by the end of the century.
Why Climate Stress is a Growing Threat
Abiotic stress can severely impact crops, affecting everything from seed germination to final yield.
For example:
- Extreme heat or prolonged drought can inhibit photosynthesis, slow growth rates, and weaken plants’ defenses, making them more susceptible to disease.
- Soil salinity and nutrient deficiencies reduce plant vigor, making recovery from infections harder.
- Recent research even suggests that climate stress can turn previously non pathogenic microbes into pathogens, further increasing the risk of crop failure (Getzke et al., 2024).
Despite advancements in breeding disease-resistant crop varieties, the complex interaction between climate stress and plant biology remains a major barrier to resilience. If left unaddressed, these issues could severely reduce global crop production, destabilizing economies and food markets worldwide.
The Call for Integrated Research and Multi-Institution Collaboration
The complexity of climate-induced stress on plants calls for a more comprehensive approach to breeding resilient crop varieties.
Traditional breeding programs focus primarily on disease resistance but often overlook the combined impact of climate stress, which can be just as damaging.
Incorporating heat, drought, and soil conditions into breeding programs can help researchers develop hardier, more reliable crop varieties capable of withstanding the economic challenges posed by climate change
Multi-institutional studies are essential to understand how different abiotic factors— such as drought and salinity—affect crops across different regions and climates.
By expanding research to encompass these combined stresses, scientists can identify high value resilience traits that traditional studies focused solely on pathogen resistance might miss.
How Abiotic & Biotic Stresses Interact to Weaken Crops
One of the most concerning aspects of climate change is how abiotic and biotic stresses interact, amplifying their impact on plant health.
Drought weakens plants, making them more susceptible to infection. Heat stress increases pest and virus outbreaks.
Soil salinity changes plant defenses, altering disease resistance.
Real-world examples of climate stress increasing disease risks:
- Rice, a global staple, faces increased threats from drought and bacterial blight (Xanthomonas oryzae). Drought triggers physiological changes that weaken the plant, while Xanthomonas infection disrupts photosynthesis, compounding the damage (Vemanna et al., 2019).
- Wheat is increasingly affected by Fusarium culmorum, which thrives in drought-stressed fields, further reducing yields (Chekali et al., 2011).
- Chickpeas are suffering from dry root rot (DRR), a disease worsening due to rising temperatures and declining water availability (Chilakala et al., 2022).
- Wheat streak mosaic virus (WSMV) resistance is breaking down under rising temperatures. While certain genes (Wsm1 and Wsm2) provide protection at cooler temperatures, their effectiveness diminishes as heat stress increases (Farahbakhsh et al., 2019).
The takeaway? As plants experience multiple stressors simultaneously, their ability to recover diminishes – leading to greater crop losses, biodiversity declines, and disruptions to agricultural ecosystems.
The Impact on Ecosystems & Food Security
These combined effects don’t just threaten crop production—they destabilize entire ecosystems.
- Plant-pollinator interactions are disrupted, reducing biodiversity.
- Some species fail to adapt, leading to ecosystem imbalances.
- The spread of invasive species accelerates, further stressing native plant populations.
The combined effects of climate change and plant diseases pose a serious challenge to agriculture and food security.
Crops that are already under threat from pests and diseases may face even greater risks as rising temperatures, water shortages, and soil degradation weaken their natural defenses.
Key Steps to Strengthen Crop Resilience
To effectively mitigate the effects of climate change on agriculture, stakeholders must prioritize the development of crops that can withstand both abiotic and biotic stressors.
Here’s how:
✔ Integrate Climate Stress into Disease Resistance Testing
- Researchers should test crops under real-world climate conditions, including heat waves, drought, and poor soil quality, to ensure they can survive multiple stressors at once.
✔ Expand Research on Combined Stresses
- Most studies focus on one stressor at a time, but crops in the field experience multiple stressors together. More research into heat + drought + disease interactions is needed.
✔ Strengthen Global Collaboration for Long-Term Research
- Multi-institutional partnerships allow scientists to study resilience traits across different climates and soil types, leading to more adaptable solutions for growers worldwide.
✔ Invest in Translational Research for Farmers
- Scientific breakthroughs must be translated into actionable strategies for growers, ensuring that knowledge reaches the field in time to make an impact.
The Future of Climate-Resilient Agriculture
Ensuring stable food production in the face of climate change requires innovation, collaboration, and investment in resilient crop breeding.
✔ By integrating abiotic factors into disease resistance research, fostering global partnerships, and developing climate-smart crops, the agricultural sector can reduce the economic risks posed by climate variability.
✔ The investments made today in interdisciplinary research will yield long-term benefits—not just for farmers, but for consumers, policymakers, and global food markets.
✔ As we face an unpredictable climate future, taking a proactive approach to climate-resilient agriculture is essential for securing food supplies for future generations.
The science is there. Now, we need action.
Pawan Kumar (He/Him)
The University of Chicago
Member of The American Phytopathological Society (APS) and Dropkin Postdoctoral Fellow Department of Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology & Department of Ecology and Evolution
Natacha Rousseau
The American Phytopathological Society
The American Phytopathological Society
This article is part of the APS Outreach Project, an initiative of the American Phytopathological Society (APS). APS is a nonprofit professional organization with over 3,600 scientists dedicated to advancing global plant health. Representing academia, government, industry, and private practice, APS members drive innovation in the accuracy and speed of field disease diagnostics and deepen our understanding of plant pathology through fundamental research. APS publishes peer-reviewed, reliable information in its scientific journals and translates research into actionable solutions for growers through the APS Outreach Project and Grow: Plant Health Exchangeˢᵐ (planthealthexchange.org), a knowledge base for plant health management professionals.
Explore additional practical resources and insights for managing plant health from APS at www.apsnet.org
–The American Phytopathological Society
