Impact of global climate change on potato diseases and strategies for their mitigation

The quality and quantity of the potatoes produced is directly affected by the climatic factors that prevailed during the crop season. It is also well established that abiotic and biotic stresses cause tremendous losses to the crop. Host plants and their pathogens are prone to various climatic factors like temperature, relative humidity, rainfall and CO2 which are behaving in erratic manner. Phytophthora infestans has adapted itself at higher temperature so there are chances to spread at a larger area. The other potato diseases like early blight, bacterial wilt, soft rot and viral diseases may also behave differently at elevated temperature and high rainfall. Viral diseases of potato are serious threat to potato industry as most of the viruses are transmitted by vectors and vector populations are bound to increase with these changed climatic conditions. Therefore, potato researchers need to simulate these conditions and devise mitigation strategies for sustained potato production.