Are plant diseases too much ignored in the climate change debate?

Ignoring plant diseases misinforms the climate change and food security debate. Diseases are expected not only to cause more severe crop loss in many areas in the world and threaten food security, but also to decrease the climate change mitigation capacity of forests, of other natural ecosystems and of producing crops. However, if research, policy and industry join forces to obtain the multidisciplinary knowledge necessary to adapt integrated pest management (IPM) to the changing climate, it is expected that sufficiently resilient cropping systems can be developed in time. This was the main conclusion of the International Conference on Climate Change and Plant Disease Management held in Evora, Portugal, in November 2010.