Irrigation and Climate Change Threaten African Crops
While the prediction of a warmer and wetter climate for sub-Saharan Africa over the next 20 years holds the promise of a better life for the region’s farmers, researchers warn it could also attract an invasion of foreign pests.
The use of irrigation, combined with climate change, could create conditions that lure insects like the tomato leaf miner, according to researchers from Kenya’s International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre.
The troublesome pest attacks crops such as peppers, potatoes, eggplant and tobacco. Native to South America, the insect reached Europe in 2006 and has since spread across the Middle East and into Africa.
Writing in the journal PLOS ONE, researchers warn that irrigation and climate change to the south of the Sahara will create a warm and moist environment in which crop-eating insects from other tropical countries and continents can thrive.
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