ABSTRACT
In addition to the nutritional gap, another major challenge for agriculture will be climate change. Its impacts range from changing precipitation patterns and more extreme weather events to different and higher disease and pest pressure (Lamichhane et al., 2015). Again, great hope rests on crop breeding to adapt plants to those changing climatic conditions. For example, many scientists attributed the rapid spread of yellow wheat rust (Puccinia striiformis f. sp. tritici, Fig. 1) that caused major yield losses in Western Europe within the past few years, especially under organic conditions, partially to milder temperatures in winter (Hovmøller et al., 2015). More resistant cultivars have to be developed while keeping pace with rapidly evolving rust strains.
