Contributions

CoA 3.2 Innovations for managing abiotic and biotic stresses

Abiotic stresses, especially temperature extremes, floods and drought, require a better understanding of the interactions between components of the system to be able to adjust the crop and genotype selection and management options to specific local conditions²²¹. This cluster will focus on testing and modelling these interactions to design farming systems that are more climate-resilient and productive. It will achieve this by developing integrated soil, crop, water and nutrient management approaches and by reducing risk through diversifying sets of crop varieties/cultivars (from FP4 and 5). The threat of biotic stresses such as insect pests, diseases and weeds is predicted to worsen with climate change. Integrated Pest Management (IPM) as an ecosystem approach will combine different strategies and practices to grow healthy crops and minimize the use of pesticides (considering profitability and markets via CoA 3.3). This CoA will assess the impact of climate change on biotic stresses and on the efficiency of IPM options on varieties (including transgenic), crop varietal mixtures under various farm management practices (CoA3.1). The CoA will be linked with the Genebank CRP to improve accessibility and use of diverse materials.

Questions to be addressed include: