Climate prediction models suggest that agricultural productivity will be significantly affected in the future. The expected rise in average global temperature due to the higher release of greenhouse gases (GHGs) into the atmosphere and increased depletion of water resources with enhanced climate variability will be a serious threat to world food security. Moreover, there is an increase in the frequency and severity of long-lasting drought events over 1/3rd of the global landmass and five times increase in water demand deficits during the 21st century. The top three cereals, wheat (Triticum aestivum), maize (Zea mays), and rice (Oryza sativa), are the major and staple food crops of most people across the world. To meet the food demand of the ever-increasing population, which is expected to increase by over 9 billion by 2050, there is a dire need to increase cereal production by approximately 70%. However, we have observed a dramatic decrease in area of fertile and arable land to grow these crops. This trend is likely to increase in the future. Therefore, this review article provides an extensive review on recent and future projected area and production, the growth requirements and greenhouse gas emissions and global warming potential of the top three cereal crops, the effects of climate change on their yields, and the morphological, physiological, biochemical, and hormonal responses of plants to drought. We also discuss the potential strategies to tackle the effects of climate change and increase yields. These strategies include integrated conventional and modern molecular techniques and genomic approach, the implementation of agronomic best management (ABM) practices, and growing climate resilient cereal crops, such as millets. Millets are less resource-intensive crops and release a lower amount of greenhouse gases compared to other cereals. Therefore, millets can be the potential next-generation crops for research to explore the climate-resilient traits and use the information for the improvement of major cereals.

Protocol based fruit fly surveillance made in 2014-15 in citrus orchards in Sindhuli district revealed six species of Bactrocera flies, namely Bactrocera minax (Enderlein), B. cucurbitaeCoquillett, B. dorsalis (Hendel), B. zonata (Saunders), B. tau Walker and B. scutellaris (Bezzi),and one species of Dacus longicornis Weidman. Except B. minax, other fruit flies we recollected in male lure traps, while B. minax fruit flies were also reared to adults from infested sweet oranges. Each species of fruit flies has been morphologically identified up to species level for field identification purpose. D. longicornis is reported for the first time from Nepal.

Fruit fly is one of the important insect pests of horticultural crops, both fruits and vegetables. After aphids, fruit fly was reported as a major insect problem in the plant clinic sessions from September 2013 to July 2016 in Nepal. The groups of horticultural crops most affected by fruit flies were cucurbitaceous vegetables, i.e. 79% of all fruit fly queries (bitter gourd, bottle gourd, chayote, cucumber, pumpkin, snake gourd, sponge gourd and squash) followed by fruits 14% (guava, sweet orange, mandarin, mango, peach, and pomegranate) and solanaceous vegetables 6% (brinjal, chillies and tomato). The fruit fly management measures, such as use of para-pheromone lure/traps, sanitation and cultural measures were mostly referred in plant clinics by plant doctors of Nepal. The availability of para-pheromone lures/traps as well as technical know-how of application focusing integrated management measures should be adopted to manage fruit fly in horticultural crops with the least disruption to the environment and human health.

Chinese citrus fly, Bactrocera minax (Enderlein), is one of the most important pests of citrus. The pest is more problematic in the eastern part of the country, Nepal. Because of the difficulties associated with the control of this pest by chemical insecticides, farmers had experienced great losses in Sweet Orange. Therefore, a participatory field survey was conducted under farmer field conditions to assess losses and measure the efficacy of different local and recommended management options to address the problem of this pest. Study consisted of two major parts: monitoring of pest population and farmer’s survey. For monitoring three orchards were selected located at different altitude i.e. 1200 masl, 1300 masl and 1400 masl. Great Fruit fly Bait (25% protein hydrolysate and 0.1% abamectin) in McPhail traps were used for monitoring. Monitoring was done in every 7 days interval and lures were changed in every 15 days for the effectiveness. Only 18.3% farmers were using protein bait for the management of fruit fly. B. minax had peak population intensity at May and was found decreasing after June so the management practices should be adopted before June to prevent the loss by fruit fly. However, for best effective control attention for monitoring and management procedures has to take place throughout the life cycle of the insect.

This study, during period of 2018 and 2019, was conducted with an objective of assessing the farmers’ perspective on the pestilence of B. minax on their citrus orchards and following thereby its pest management measures in the selected eight citrus growing districts of Nepal. Respondent citrus growers were male dominated (75.8%) where Brahmin and Chhetri castes (54.3%) were dominantly involved in the citrus cultivation in the survey districts. Only 25.7% respondent citrus growers had above school level education. The highest reported land holding area, 2.35 ha, was in Sankhuwasabha district followed by Dhankuta (1.72 ha) and Syanjya (1.67 ha). According to the respondents, an average of 234.12 mandarin trees in Syanjya, 159.60 sweet orange trees in Sindhuli, 9.68 lemon trees in Sindhuli, and 11.83 lime trees in Gulmi were calculated maximum acreage of different citrus fruit trees by the each citrus grower. Among the cultivated Citrus spp., lemon fruit found to be extremely vulnerable to Chinese citrus fly infestation. Chinese citrus fly's maggot infestation peak in fruits in orchards was observed in October in the citrus crop cycle. Twenty citrus dominated districts in Nepal found to be regularly invaded of Chinese citrus fly in citrus particularly in lemon, sweet orange and mandarin.