WUN Research Update: Enhancing Food Security Through Climate-smart Crop Protection in Africa

A consortium of Worldwide University Network (WUN) researchers is finalising Sub-Saharan Africa crop risk maps to forecast the future and bring climate-smart agriculture to smallholder farmers, securing a vital food source: maize.

It’s critical research, as maize crops succumb to northern leaf blight, a major fungal disease that thrives in the humidity, erratic rainfall, and mild winters shaped by climate change. The blight causes premature plant death and yield losses of up to 70 per cent.

The high-resolution risk maps will forecast northern leaf blight, caused by the fungus Exserohilum turcicum, under baseline and future climate conditions across the continent. They will identify vulnerable regions to help breeders prioritise resistant maize varieties. This will help farmers implement climate-smart fungicide application strategies on the continent.

By integrating historical disease data with adverse climate modelling, the WUN research team, led by Dr David Livingstone Nsibo of the University of Pretoria, has combined world-leading expertise in plant disease ecology and climate modelling that no single institution offers. 

Dr Nsibo says the team is basically designing systems to keep maize alive in a changing world. The models predict how the disease might spread now and into the future, across major maize-growing countries in southern Africa (South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Zambia), eastern Africa (Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania), and western Africa (Nigeria and Ghana).

With Professor Pete Falloon from the University of Bristol, Professor Daniel Bebber from the University of Exeter, and Dr Gerald A B Yiran from the University of Ghana, the team has benchmarked its findings globally while maintaining regional relevance. Dr Nsibo says the project has “facilitated a knowledge exchange that bridges the gap between African field pathology and European computational science, creating a truly multidisciplinary approach to food security.”

The research will impact the lives of millions of smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa and millions more who depend on maize as a food source.

For Dr Nsibo, it means researchers are “no longer just documenting the destruction of maize but rather, designing systems to enhance maize production in sub-Saharan Africa.”

This research was conducted with a WUN Research Development Fund grant. You can read more about the project here.