Ireland may experience an increase in grass diseases in the future as a result of warming due to climate change, a Teagasc researcher has said.

Speaking on a Teagasc Signpost webinar, Dr Elodie Ruelle said at present grass diseases are not a pressing concern in this country due to our current climate, but this could change in the future.

“Higher temperatures increase the likelihood of grass diseases, higher humidity also. That means in our future climate we have more of a chance to have more grass diseases, due to those higher temperatures,” she said.

Ruelle has conducted research in the area of farming adaptations to climate change and is currently working on a Department of Agriculture funded project, Agri Adapt, which will develop a strategy for Irish agriculture to adapt to climate change.

The researcher said one way to circumvent grass diseases is higher nitrogen output, while current policy indications point towards a lowering of nitrogen.

“Maybe we will get more grass and grass diseases. So we need to be careful about that and start thinking about it, part of the project is going to start to look a bit at that.

“In the future, what are we going to do about it? That will probably be breeding selection, breeding grass varieties that are disease resistant in the future,” she said.

Agri Adapt

As part of the project, Ruelle added that they would like to develop a trafficability predictor based on weather forecasts and also modelling for nitrogen fertiliser recommendation on a paddock-by-paddock basis, the latter she said would be “very complicated”.

“With the model, we would be able to know how much nitrogen is still in the soil. Then you could give specific recommendations paddock-by-paddock on when and how much fertiliser you should put on each paddock, but we are not there yet.”

“Finally, a collaboration with Met Éireann, we hope to do some national warnings. The same way that you have your blight warning, can we have drought warnings, nitrogen leeching warnings and maybe grass disease warnings,” she said.