ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Plant Sci.

Sec. Plant Pathogen Interactions

Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1548640

This article is part of the Research TopicUnraveling Pathogen-Plant-Microbiome Interactions in Horticultural Crops Through Omics ApproachesView all 18 articles

Implications for Agricultural Sustainability: Predicting the Global Distribution of Ralstonia solanacearum Under Current and Future Climate Scenarios

Provisionally accepted
Omar ElghoulOmar Elghoul1Wael Nabil HozzeinWael Nabil Hozzein2Aya TagyanAya Tagyan2*Walaa RabieWalaa Rabie3Dalal Hussain M. ALkhalifahDalal Hussain M. ALkhalifah4Noura A. El-FarNoura A. El-Far1
  • 1Ain Shams University, Cairo, Cairo, Egypt
  • 2Faculty of Science, Beni-Suef University, Beni-Suef, Egypt
  • 3New Giza University, Giza, Giza, Egypt
  • 4Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

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A rapidly growing population and subsequent urbanization continue to strain agriculture's ability to provide a stable food supply, both directly and indirectly in the form of land reclamation and accelerating climate change, respectively. Climate change specifically may lead to the range shifting of various infectious agents that strain agricultural production. One of the biggest infectious challenges to agriculture is bacterial wilt caused by Ralstonia solanacearum, which is lethal to many economically important crops such as tomatoes, bananas, eggplants, tobacco, and others. To predict the potential geographical distribution of bacterial wilt in both the present as well as in different future climate change scenarios, we employed maximum entropy modeling to construct predictive maps of the R. solanacearum distribution, which yielded models with excellent accuracy and quality, with 0.89 AUC and 0.94 TSS. The most significant environmental predictor to the distribution of R. solanacearum was found to be the annual mean temperature. The current distribution map shows an almost cosmopolitan distribution that may allow inference of the regions most vulnerable to bacterial wilt, while the future climate change distribution maps show substantial range shifts on every continent. The results highlight an urgent need to promote sustainable development practices to ensure a stable food supply, especially in developing nations, as well as the need to develop novel environmentally friendly methods to control the spread of R. solanacearum and minimize agricultural losses.

Keywords: Ralstonia solanacearum, Bacterial wilt, Climate Change, Species distribution modeling, Maximum entropy modeling, agricultural sustainability, Ecological impact, Bioclimatic variables

Received: 20 Dec 2024; Accepted: 30 Jun 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Elghoul, Hozzein, Tagyan, Rabie, ALkhalifah and El-Far. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Aya Tagyan, Faculty of Science, Beni-Suef University, Beni-Suef, Egypt

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