| Summary: | This white paper reports the deliberations of a wo
rkshop focused on biotic challenges to plant health
held in Washington, D.C. in September 2016. Ensuring
health of food plants is critical to maintaining the
quality and productivity of crops and for sustenance of the rapidly growing human population. There is a
close linkage between food security and societal stabil
ity; however, global food security is threatened by
the vulnerability of our agricultural systems to
numerous pests, pathogens, weeds, and environmental
stresses. These threats are aggravated by climate ch
ange, the globalization of agriculture, and an over-
reliance on non-sustainable inputs. New analytical
and computational technologies are providing
unprecedented resolution at a variety of molecular,
cellular, organismal, and population scales for crop
plants as well as pathogens, pests, beneficial microbes, and weeds. It is now possible to both
characterize useful or deleterious variation as well as precisely manipulate it. Data-driven, informed
decisions based on knowledge of the variation of biot
ic challenges and of natural and synthetic variation
in crop plants will enable deployment of durable in
terventions throughout the world. These should be
integral, dynamic components of agricultural strategies for sustainable agriculture.
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