As the climate crisis alters familiar growing conditions, we urgently need to find ways of protecting the world against famines. Currently, our food system is heavily dependent on pesticides—but these pesticides grow less effective as pests develop resistance to them, have a substantial carbon footprint, and can damage biodiversity. Induced resistance, using plants’ immune systems to build up their strength and fight pests, could be critical to reducing our reliance on pesticides and developing sustainable agriculture.
In a growing and changing world, we need to find ways of putting food on everyone's table. Pesticides have enabled mass cultivation on an incredible scale, but they can have harmful secondary effects on humans and wildlife, and pests are rapidly evolving to overcome them. To overcome this challenge and develop the sustainable and resilient agriculture of the future, scientists writing in Frontiers in Science explore the potential of induced resistance.
Like a vaccination for plants, it deliberately triggers a plant's immune system, so that when the plant encounters a similar stress in the future, it fights back better. While induced resistance has been studied for decades, its exploitation in crop protection has only recently begun to gain momentum. We argue in favor of a holistic approach to crop protection, which combines multiple strategies to deliver tailored solutions.
Induced resistance sits in the heart of such an integrated approach." Prof Brigitte .
