Assessment of crop health and losses to plant diseases in world agricultural foci
Andrew Nelson: University of Twente
<div>In November 2016, the ISPP Crop Loss Subject Matter Committee initiated a three-month online global survey of crop losses. The global survey appears to be the first collective expert assessment of the importance of losses caused by diseases and pests of the world’s five most important food crops; wheat, rice, maize, soybean and potato. This voluntary survey on the location, frequency and magnitude of crop losses caused by diseases and pests generated 990 responses from 216 experts in 67 countries. These responses were used to generate expert-based estimates of crop losses using a three step procedure: (i) an assessment of the representativeness and validity of the survey results by comparing the reported losses and geographic distribution of diseases and pests to those in the CABI Crop Protection Compendium datasheets and other references; (ii) computation of average losses per disease or pest per country for each country that featured in the survey results and imputation of losses for countries where the disease or pest was known to occur but was not reported, and; (iii) adjustment of these average losses based on national crop production statistics and the ecology and management of each disease and pest.</p> <p>This talk presents the estimated losses by crop and by disease or pest, both globally and across eight geographic food security foci. We compare these new estimates with existing estimates and discuss the importance and validity of this global crop loss assessment.</div>
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