Can agricultural practices that mitigate or improve crop resilience to climate change also manage crop pests?

doi:10.1016/j.cois.2017.07.008

Current Opinion in Insect Science

Volume 23, October 2017, Pages 81-88

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cois.2017.07.008 Get rights and content

Highlights

•
Climate change effect-mitigating farming practices may also facilitate pest control.
•
Practices can be used to control pest abundance and natural enemy abundance/diversity.
•
Research is needed to test practices’ effects on pests under climate change scenarios.

Sustainable agricultural practices that are promoted for mitigating climate change have the potential to also improve pest management. The author highlights recent studies that demonstrate effects of climate-mitigating agricultural practices on arthropod pests and predators in agronomic cropping systems. Promising practices for suppressing pests and/or improving biological control include: plant species diversification, especially via the addition of perennial species; cover cropping; tillage practices that retain crop residue; application of organic fertilizers such as compost and manure; and water management practices such as irrigation and sustainable rice intensification. More research is needed that explicitly tests pest and predator responses to agricultural practices under climate change conditions, if these practices are to be effectively promoted and implemented as agricultural pest management strategies.

Introduction

As climate patterns change, farmers are beginning to alter their practices to adapt to new environmental conditions [1, 2, 3, 4]. The most immediate concerns are water conservation and crop resilience to extreme weather (e.g., storms, floods, abnormal temperatures) [5]. Practices that reduce greenhouse gas emissions are also a high priority, as some current practices (i.e., synthetic nitrogen fertilizer application to crops, rice field flooding) increase nitrous oxide (N₂O) and methane (CH₄) emissions [6, 7].

Controlling insect pests should be considered equally important, as climate change could increase outbreak frequencies and geographical distributions of pests [8]. Climate change is predicted to affect agricultural pests and natural enemies directly, by altering insect phenology [9, 10], pest activity and feeding [10, 11], natural enemy foraging behavior [12, 13, 14] and pest and predator mortality [10]. However, pests and natural enemies are also affected by agricultural practices such as tillage, crop diversity, cover cropping, fertilizer application, and water management [15]. These practices can improve crop resilience to herbivory and increase natural enemy diversity, thus buffering the disruption of biological control under climate change conditions [16]. It is therefore necessary to directly test and understand the effects of climate change-mitigating agricultural practices on arthropods.

This review highlights recent research on climate-mitigating agricultural practices in agronomic cropping systems, and how they affect pest and beneficial arthropods (Figure 1). Where possible, studies that examine pest and natural enemy responses to these practices under climate change conditions are highlighted.

Section snippets

Tillage

Tillage, or inversion of topsoil in agricultural fields, has traditionally been employed to prepare the soil for planting, control weeds, and maximize water availability to crops [17]. However, intensive tillage can increase soil vulnerability to erosion and drought [17], both of which may increase under climate change [5]. Alternative tillage strategies have been developed to address these negative effects. Reduced tillage and no-till in cropping systems (Table 1) can retain soil moisture,

Intercropping and crop rotation

Landscape-level plant diversification is often emphasized for improving control of agricultural pests [28]. While landscape heterogeneity is important for ecological conservation and maintaining beneficial insect diversity, crop diversification at the field level can also significantly impact pest management [29], and some field-level diversification practices are specifically acknowledged for their climate-adaptive capabilities. I will highlight two field level methods, intercropping and crop

Cover cropping

Cover crops, which are planted between cash crops [41] (Table 1), reduce erosion, conserve water, and may reduce greenhouse gas emissions from otherwise fallow soil [19, 42]. Cover crop monocultures and mixtures introduce plant species diversity and ecosystem services into crop rotations [41, 43], including pest management [38^••]. By covering otherwise fallow land, cover crops can also provide habitat continuity, which may increase natural enemy populations in agroecosystems [44].

Cover crop

Fertilization

Organic fertilizers, particularly compost and manure, can boost beneficial insects [51, 52] and in doing so suppress pests [52]. Manure can suppress pest insect abundance directly [51, 53], although manure may occasionally improve pest performance, such as increased African black beetle (Heteronychus arator F.) populations in manure-fertilized maize [54]. In alfalfa within a maize-alfalfa rotation, pest populations in conventionally fertilized fields increased when warmed 2 °C, while populations

Water management practices

Climate change is predicted to increase drought where water is already limited, and also increase the frequency and severity of storms, which increases vulnerability of agricultural soils to erosion [5]. Two agricultural water management practices which also have demonstrable effects on crop pests are irrigation [2, 63••] and the system of rice intensification (SRI) [64] (Table 1). Reducing cotton field irrigation decreases the abundance of chewing insects, such as cotton leafworms (Alabama

Future research directions

Climate change effects are already being felt in many parts of the world. Farmers in the worst affected regions are responding by altering their practices to mitigate or curtail these effects [2, 3, 4]. As highlighted in this and previous reviews [8, 51, 71, 72], many of the agricultural practices recommended to protect crops from climate change effects may also benefit pest management, by suppressing pest populations, increasing arthropod natural enemy abundance, or increasing natural enemy

Conflict of interest statement

Nothing declared.

References and recommended reading

Papers of particular interest, published within the period of review, have been highlighted as:

• of special interest
•• of outstanding interest

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank M.E. Barbercheck, B.T. Barton, J. Hinds, T.D. Johnson, C.A. Mullen, K.J. Regan, and two anonymous reviewers for comments and suggested edits to this manuscript. The author of this work was supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, United States Department of Agriculture [grant number 2015-51300-24156].

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View full text

Can agricultural practices that mitigate or improve crop resilience to climate change also manage crop pests?

Highlights

Introduction

Section snippets

Tillage

Intercropping and crop rotation

Cover cropping

Fertilization

Water management practices

Future research directions

Conflict of interest statement

References and recommended reading

Acknowledgements

Sci Total Environ

Agric Water Manag

Ecol Modell

Agric Ecosyst Environ

Agric Ecosyst Environ

Agric Ecosyst Environ

Appl Soil Ecol

Int J Agric Sustain

Int J Agric Sustain

J Appl Ecol

J Appl Ecol

Landsc Ecol

J Appl Entomol

J Plant Nutr

Agron Sustain Dev

Food Webs

J Crop Weed

Agric Ecosyst Environ

Farmer perceptions of climate change risk and associated on-farm management strategies in Vermont, northeastern United States

Elem Sci Anthr

Farmer perception and adaptation strategies on climate change in lower eastern Kenya: a case of finger millet (Eleusine coracana (L.) Gaertn) production

J Agric Sci

Climate change impact and adaptation practices in agriculture: a case study of Rautahat District, Nepal

Climate

Agriculture

Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990–2014

Strategies for mitigating climate change in agriculture

Climate Focus and California Environmental Associates, prepared with the support of the Climate and Land Use Alliance

Robust cropping systems to tackle pests under climate change. A review

Agron Sustain Dev

Warm springs reduce parasitism of the cereal leaf beetle through phenological mismatch

J Appl Entomol

Climate change and biological control in agricultural systems: principles and examples from North America

Climate change will exacerbate California's insect pest problems

Calif Agric

Using functional response modeling to investigate the effect of temperature on predator feeding rate and energetic efficiency

Oecologia

Effects of simulated heat waves on an experimental plant-herbivore-predator food chain

Glob Chang Biol

Tillage

Agriculture's role in greenhouse gas emissions & capture

Fourteen years of evidence for positive effects of conservation agriculture and organic farming on soil life

Agron Sustain Dev

Cover crop and tillage intensities alter ground-dwelling arthropod communities during the transition to organic production

Renew Agric Food Syst

Organic agriculture promotes evenness and natural pest control

Nature

Conservation tillage mitigates the negative effect of landscape simplification on biological control

J Appl Ecol

Pests, pesticide use and alternative options in European maize production: current status and future prospects

J Appl Entomol