International Year of Plant Health Special Issue
Plants are the source of the air we breathe and most of the food we eat, yet we often don’t think about keeping them healthy. This can have devastating results. The United National General Assembly declared 2020 as the International Year of Plant Health. There is opportunity in this to create awareness for the role plant health plays in forest ecosystems and commercial forestry. To this end, Southern Forests: a Journal of Forest Science, Volume 82, Issue 3 is a Special Issue titled, "International Year of Plant Health: a Focus on Tree Health".
Guest Edited by Jolanda Roux and with Editor-in-Chief, Dr Hannel Ham, this special issue contains a range of articles dealing with different aspects of pest and disease management, both in commercial plantations and native forest ecosystems. "We trust that you will find this Special issue of Southern Forests valuable and useful and that it will inspire you to reach out and play a role in keeping trees and their associated ecosystems healthy."
A commentary featured in this special issue speaks to harnessing the potential of Precision Pest Management in plantation forests. Slippers, Hurley and Allison comment on the scale and complexity of the threat of invasive and emerging pests and the requirement of precise management tools. They define Precision Pest Management (PPM) as an approach to pest management that emphasizes characterizing variation and diversity in pest systems and developing Integrated Pest Management (IPM) programs that address this variation and diversity.
The realm of tree/plant health today and into the future is not limited to that of "traditional" pathologists and entomologists, but requires IT and big data specialists, engineers, social science experts, ecologists and many more and it is to this that this special issue speaks.
A key message from The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) is that ‘We all have a role to play’ as we all enjoy the benefits from trees as food sources, filtration of water, wood products and the air we breathe. Effective plant health management requires knowledge and the integration of this knowledge into practical, economic and environmentally friendly solutions.
You can read this special issue at no cost for a limited free access period here until the end of January 2021.