Dual Threats to Agriculture: Deciphering the Coupled Effects of Air Pollution and Climate Change on Agricultural Diseases

This review seeks to elucidate the synergistic processes via which air pollution and climate change jointly affect the incidence and the extent of diseases related to agriculture. The review looks at the combined effect of stresses on host-pathogen interactions to offer a comprehensive knowledge of contemporary agricultural concerns. A thorough examination of existing literature was performed, incorporating physiological, molecular, and ecological data. The review assesses how atmospheric pollutants like tropospheric ozone and particulate matter interact with meteorological factors like fluctuating temperature and precipitation, with an emphasis on how these factors collectively affect crop vulnerability. The synthesis shows that the combination of pollutants and abiotic stresses dramatically changes the pathogenicity of pathogens and promotes the formation of novel disease complexes. Significant results show that host plant resistance is commonly hampered by antagonistic signaling crosstalk; particularly, early signaling hubs involving reactive oxygen species and phytohormones emphasize abiotic stress responses, hence inhibiting immunological pathways. This physiological trade-off makes crops more susceptible to diseases, which can lead to significant losses in worldwide productivity. To ensure global food security, disease management must move to climate-informed systems that account for many concurrent stressors. Future research should prioritize interdisciplinary techniques to identify specific genes conveying different stress tolerances and develop effective forecasting models that combine both weather and pollution data.