PERSONALITY PROFILE
there is an outbreak of a pest or disease , the business sector needs to respond immediately . At FABI we aim to provide a bridge of this divide by providing short term responses to industry needs , in turn , industry invests in long-term capacity and knowledge development within this space .
We make sure that capacity development is relevant to the problems our industry typically deals with , or that we can predict that our industry will deal with in the future . It is critical to predict and prepare for factors that we are relatively certain will affect the industry in the coming years and build the necessary capacity to respond when they do . If there was an outbreak of a new pest , for example , we ideally need to have mechanisms in place to respond immediately . In some cases , for instance , we might need to produce biological control products if industry does not have the capacity to do so .
Across forestry and agriculture , we increasingly use data science and sensing technologies as an essential part of our research . These are becoming important tools in the measurement of trends and in the decisions made in industry too .
What , in your view , are the biggest threats facing the forestry industry ? The threats encompass an entire spectrum of interrelated factors , from the internal politics of the country to international markets . But those are obviously not all spaces that we work in . The areas in which we work has to do with the production side of forestry . In other words , the base material , genetics , the breeding , and protection of plants . This also includes threats like pests and diseases , climate change , and various other biotic and abiotic influences on the production base .
The species mixes that we have bred for many years might in the future become less useful because of how weather patterns shift and change the responses of those plants to its biotic environment . One reason is because the interaction with pests and diseases that are already present is likely to change because of climate variation .
This is for two reasons . Firstly , the plants will experience stress in a different manner and respond to that environment differently . Secondly , the lifecycle of pests and pathogens might change through , for example , shortening lifecycles which translates into higher numbers per season or more cycles per season , or pathogens that now affect trees in areas where they did not previously exist . Those factors could also interact to increase the threats .
One needs to remember that climate change is not only driving things necessarily in a negative direction . You might have higher rainfall patterns in some areas . The same pests and pathogens that currently do well in certain areas might not do well in those areas in
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