Alternative plant protection strategies for tomorrow's coffee

Abstract

Around 2 billion cups of coffee are consumed daily, worldwide (Reay, 2019). However, the coffee plant is under threat due to its vulnerability to a plethora of plant pests and diseases, exacerbated by climate change (Avelino, ten Hoopen, et al., 2012;Kumar et al., 2016).In fact, the typical coffee farmer faces a diverse onslaught by an assortment of beetles, bacteria, fungi and nematodes in just one production season (Waller et al., 2007). Traditional chemical pesticides (i.e., insecticides and fungicides) have been a mainstay of the Green Revolution, and thus commonly deployed in coffee production. With more than 470 licensed products approved for use in Brazil alone (Coelho et al., 2019), these agrochemicals are being used as a primary means of management in the onset of pests and diseases across all agricultural sectors including coffee (

The coffee leaf rust pandemic: An ever‐present danger to coffee production

“…It has frequently been reported to occur on coffee plants naturally infected by H. vastatrix. It has been studied through in vitro challenges over the past three decades (Shaw, 1987;Vélez & Rosillo, 1995) and further research continues on its antagonistic mechanisms against CLR (reviewed by Koutouleas, Collinge, & Raebild, 2022). The timing of L. lecanii applications appears to be critical in its effectiveness against CLR (Vélez & Rosillo, 1995); it needs to be established in the field prior to the introduction of H. vastatrix.…”

“…Coffee is attacked by several damaging diseases and pests (Koutouleas, Collinge, & Ræbild, 2022), yet despite many years of scientific research CLR still poses a critical challenge to low‐resource farmers across most coffee‐growing regions (Avelino, Romero‐Gurdián, et al., 2012). New challenges await, with forecasts of increased disease severity and incidence under changing climates (Castillo et al., 2020).…”

“…Greater disease severity has been reported in the humid microclimates created when plants are close together and crowded canopies of individual plants that are irregularly pruned. Coffee agroforestry, where plants are mixed with a variety of taller timber and fruit trees, also increases humidity below (Koutouleas, Collinge, & Ræbild, 2022; Sera et al., 2022). Work by Avelino et al.…”

“…Greater disease severity has been reported in the humid microclimates created when plants are close together and crowded canopies of individual plants that are irregularly pruned. Coffee agroforestry, where plants are mixed with a variety of taller timber and fruit trees, also increases humidity below(Koutouleas, Collinge, & Raebild, 2022;Sera et al, 2022). Work byAvelino et al (2006) andAvelino, ten Hoopen, and DeClerck (2012) suggests that shade trees, soil pH, fertilization and altitude all have a more prominent effect on CLR development and severity compared to general rainfall.…”

Differential Volatile Organic Compound Expression in the Interaction of Daldinia eschscholtzii and Mycena citricolor

“…Along this line, if the set of SPME variables to use ignores those variables that were absent in the HS experiments, the number of variables is reduced to 12. By performing this reduction on data, the PCA considered compound 37 as the only loading associated with the coculture samples (Figure 3A), PLS-DA scores acquired 59% cumulative variance, maintaining the D and coculture clusters, and the VIPs included 9-epi-β-caryophyllene (25) and 1,8-dimethoxynaphthalene (37), whose concentrations were higher in the coculture (Figure 3B). The last leads us to test the effect of these compounds against the M. citricolor reproductive structures, as explained further.…”