posted on 2024-06-21, 03:57authored byMonika Walter, John Saunders, David Manktelow, Teiarere Stephens, Kumar Vetharaniam, Robert Ward, Alby Marsh, Steve Thomas, Mike Barley, Peter Tait, Dion Mundy
This free interactive tool provides apple and grape growers and prospective investors with a glimpse into how climate change may affect the risk and costs of living with common plant diseases in different parts of New Zealand.
The Changing Climate: Disease Risk & Costs tool allows people to enter their orchard or vineyard's address to view their farm's risk of Apple Fire Blight, Grape Powdery Mildew and Grape Botrytis on their crops under different climate change scenarios.
It also translates that risk into financial terms, helping people understand how climate change may affect the cost of managing plant diseases on their land in the decades ahead.
This tool was guided by industry stakeholder engagement across the pipfruit, viticulture, kiwifruit, forestry, nuts, avocado, arable, and education sectors.
The tool can also help central and local government planners understand how plant disease risk is changing at a regional and national level, and how much it might cost to mitigate those risks in the future.
Funding
Funded by the New Zealand Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment's Our Land and Water National Science Challenge (Toitū te Whenua, Toiora te Wai) as part of project Crop Disease Under Climate Change