Modelling of Future Oil Palm Microbial Diseases and Poor Oil Palm Development, Compared to Modelling Other Crops, Provide Solutions to the

Maintaining food systems in the face of climate change (CC) is a major concern. Palm oil is included in many commodities and this food system will be affected detri-mentally by inclement future climate, when oil palm (OP) will experience increased disease and declining growth. The OP diseases considered are basal stem rot (BSR), bud rot (BR) and fusarium wilt (FW), where the attempts to control them have been un-successful. An approach may be to replace compromised OP with different crops better suited to future climate: These plants will have less disease because of the “Parasites Lost” phenomenon. Maintaining a vegetable oil product is an important advantage. How CC will affect OP and associated ailments has been determined previously by CLIMEX modelling. The modelling of future suitable climate (FSC) has also been car-ried out for soybean, maize and the common bean (CB) using the same modelling pa-rameters. This enables direct comparisons in the OP producing countries of Colombia, Nigeria and Papua New Guinea (PNG). Limited data for rapeseed are also discussed. The FSC for OP was much reduced in these countries and that for soybean was higher. Soybeans will have less disease as it would be an introduced and annual crop. Maize had much fewer advantages and the CB and rapeseed had none. Maize had potential advantages in Nigeria until 2050. A novel method for adapting to the serious diseases of OP and poor growth would be to grow soybeans in similar regions to where OP grows currently. Plans could be made for replacing OP with soybeans which could be modified when real time data becomes available. The paper provides a novel method for mitigating future diseases and poor growth of OP, which are otherwise unavailable, whilst maintaining a valuable oil product.