The first Southeast Asia plant protection conference: Plant protection sciences for future life

Giyanto 1* , S H Hidayat 1 , D Buchori 1 , S Wiyono 1 , and D Sartiami 1 1 Department of Plant Protection, Faculty of Agriculture, IPB University. Jln. Kamper Kampus IPB Dragama, Bogor 16680, Indonesia *Email: giyanto@apps.ipb.ac.id 1. Background The world population continues to increase. In 2018 the world population reached 7.63 billion people and continued to rise in 2019 to 7.71 billion. As consequences there is an increase in demand for agricultural products, especially food products for providing the daily needs. The loss of agricultural products due to pests, diseases and weeds in the world reaches 9%, or equivalent to US 8.05 billion dollars per year. Countries in the Southeast Asia with characteristics of tropical climate have very high agricultural potential as world food source, while on the other hand the characteristics of tropical agro-climate allow the development of pests, diseases, and weeds, that can cause greater crop damage or loss compared to temperate or sub-tropical countries. Climate change has significant effect on the presence of pests. This requires close cooperation among Southeast Asia countries in facing the impacts of climate change and the threat of pests to the agriculture sector. The development of science and technology has an impact on pest management, such as pest detection and identification systems, estimation of yield loss, techniques for applying pesticides and others have shown very rapid development, especially related to the utilization of satellite image data, spectral technology and drones. Furthermore, efforts to manage crop pests, diseases, and weeds continue to develop in accordance with the development of science and technology.