New tools needed to prevent plant disease pandemics

Plant diseases don't stop at a nation's borders and miles of oceans don't prevent their spread, either. That's why plant disease surveillance, improved plant disease detection systems and predictive plant disease modeling—integrated at the global scale—are necessary to mitigate future plant disease outbreaks and protect the global food supply, according to a team of researchers in a new commentary published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.