Future distributions of 'Fusarium oxysporum' f. spp. in European, Middle Eastern and North African agricultural regions under climate change

Abstract

The levels of inaccuracy in projections of global climate model outputs can be reduced by identification of the correlations between the output results of a number of models, which include common assumptions. Some of the invasive pathogen of 'Fusarium oxysporum' f. spp. pose risks to a number of cash crops such as banana, tomato, palm and garlic while some have a symbiotic relation varying from pathogenic to commensal (null effect), up to beneficial effect. Limitation of occurrence records of many single species such as 'F. oxysporum' f. sp. 'cubense', 'F. oxysporum' f. sp. 'albedinis', 'F. oxysporum' f. sp. 'lycopersici' and 'F. 'oxysporum' f. sp. 'vasinfectum' necessitated this study to model the future distribution of 'F. oxysporum' f. spp. rather than individual species. The future distribution of 'F. oxysporum' f. spp. was modeled by CSIRO-Mk3.0 (CS) and MIROC-H (MR) GCMs, and the results were correlated to identify areas suitable for 'F. oxysporum' f. spp. growth for North Africa, Middle Eastern and European countries for the years 2050 and 2100. The projections established that a number of countries will become highly conducive to this fungus, while others are projected to produce marginal levels of conduciveness by 2050 and 2100. We also demonstrate that refining CLIMEX outputs with a combination of a number of alternative GCMs results ensures that modeled projections become more robust, rather than producing purely hypothetical findings.