Economic and physical determinants of the global distributions of crop pests and pathogens.

ABSTRACT: Crop pests and pathogens pose a significant and growing threat to food security, but their geographical distributions are poorly understood. We present a global analysis of pest and pathogen distributions, to determine the roles of socioeconomic and biophysical factors in determining pest diversity, controlling for variation in observational capacity among countries. Known distributions of 1901 pests and pathogens were obtained from CABI. Linear models were used to partition the variation in pest species per country amongst predictors. Reported pest numbers increased with per capita gross domestic product (GDP), research expenditure and research capacity, and the influence of economics was greater in micro-organisms than in arthropods. Total crop production and crop diversity were the stro

SUBMITTER: Bebber DP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4285859 | biostudies-literature | 2014 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature