Biological Science: Research Developments and Innovations Vol. 2

Climate change is altering the biological and epidemiological context in which crop protection operates. Warming, changing precipitation, drought, extreme events and rising atmospheric carbon dioxide can modify pest development, overwintering, migration, pathogen infection, host resistance, vector competence and the synchrony between pests and natural enemies. Yet climate-driven emergence is not a uniformly increasing process: responses vary with latitude, baseline climate, crop genotype, production system, pathogen lifestyle, dispersal capacity and management history. This critical narrative review synthesises evidence on arthropod pests and infectious crop diseases, with emphasis on the mechanisms that convert climatic change into altered outbreak probability, the strengths and limitations of early-warning approaches, and the design of resilient crop protection. Literature was selected through searches of open scholarly sources and citation tracing, prioritising peer-reviewed studies, high-quality reviews and field-relevant evidence published from 2000 to 4 July 2026, while retaining earlier foundational work where necessary. The evidence is strongest for poleward range shifts, warmer-season acceleration of many ectothermic pests, altered pathogen infection windows and changes in overwintering survival. Confidence is lower for universal claims about outbreak magnitude because thermal limits, moisture stress, extreme heat, trophic interactions and crop management can reverse or buffer expected responses. Weather-based forecasting, pathogen and pest surveillance, remote sensing, imaging, spore monitoring and machine-learning systems increasingly support anticipatory management, but transferability, calibration, data scarcity and unequal access constrain operational value. Resilient protection therefore requires portfolios rather than single technologies: climate-informed integrated pest management, durable host resistance, conservation biological control, diversified landscapes, resistance stewardship, adaptive thresholds, strengthened phytosanitary surveillance and locally validated decision support. The central challenge is not simply predicting more pests or more disease, but identifying where climate reorganises host-pest-pathogen systems sufficiently to invalidate historical risk assumptions and management calendars.