Warming Likely Boon To Corn Earworm, Borer, Other Crop Pests - Reuters

[hatrack]

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Populations of insects that feed on corn and other crops in the United States may flourish and expand to new territory as global climate change brings warmer summers and milder winters in the decades ahead, according to a new study.

More frequent or more severe pest infestations may cut crop yields and drive up the price of corn, used for food and animal feed and to produce renewable fuels. "Our projections showed all of the species studied spreading into agricultural areas where they currently are not endemic," said Noah Diffenbaugh, a Purdue University associate professor of earth and atmospheric sciences who led the study.

"The greatest potential range expansion was seen with the corn earworm, which is known to infest other high-value crops such as sweet corn and tomatoes. Warming could allow populations to survive the winter in the upper Midwest, the key region for corn production, as well as areas of the West where other high-value crops are grown," he said. Researchers used climate model simulations that suggest winters will be milder more often later in the 21st century while summer growing seasons will be longer and warmer more often than they are now.

They compared the climate models to the temperature survival thresholds of four common corn pests found in the United States, the world's top corn producer and exporter. "Basically, we examined both the number of days warm enough for the pests to grow and the number of days cold enough to kill the pests," said Purdue entomologist Christian Krupke. "This tells us what could happen in projected future climates." For example, temperatures in Iowa, the top U.S. corn producing state, were suitable for corn earworm survival in zero to three years of every 24 years in the 20th Century. But in the 21st Century, that frequency was projected to increase to one to seven out of every 24 years.

EDIT

http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE4BG45X20081217?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews

[Vanje]

1. Earworm!!???

Does that mean corn plants wont be able to get the theme from Gilligans Island, out of their heads?

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale
A tale of a fateful trip.......

[hatrack]

2. Well, better that than "Total Eclipse Of The Heart"

I mean, even GMO corn has some standards!

[The2ndWheel]

3. Goddamn evolution

Also nice that we call them pests. That way, we can eradicate any life that we find unproductive and a drain on profitability. We take control of evolution, even stop it, intelligently design the planet to fit the specific and narrow needs of a single species, then destroy diversity as a business plan, which increases efficiency, thus lowering the cost to us by privatizing the profits and socializing the costs.

Intelligent design...that's the religious crack-pot right wing corporately funded enemy of evolution, right? Yeah, that's weird. Unless one would call what humans do in this case as stupid design. But then that doesn't really inspire confidence in this whole collectively global experiment. So we're either using intelligent design, which isn't evolution, and shouldn't even be taught in public schools, or we're using stupid design, which would call into question everything we do, including what we would want to teach in public schools. On the other hand, we can't just allow evolution to happen, as we end up with pests, which then infest our stupidly intelligent/intelligently stupid designs.