Agroecological Plant Protection for Climate-Resilient Food Systems: Integrating Biodiversity-Based Pest Suppression, Biocontrol Networks, and Soil-Mediated Defense

Abstract

Global food systems face a convergence of pressures from climate variability, biodiversity loss and the diminishing returns of pesticide-intensive crop protection. This review synthesises current evidence on agroecological plant protection as a pathway toward climate-resilient agriculture, focusing on three interlinked pillars: biodiversity-based pest suppression through crop and landscape diversification, biological control networks operating across trophic levels and spatial scales, and soil-mediated plant defense mediated by rhizosphere microbiota and mycorrhizal symbioses. Evidence from meta-analyses generally indicates that plant diversification can reduce herbivore pressure and enhance natural enemy abundance, although outcomes are moderated by landscape context, herbivore guilds and management intensity. Landscape complexity supports natural enemy communities more reliably than it suppresses pest populations outright, revealing a persistent gap between biodiversity conservation and realised pest control. Soil microbiomes and mycorrhizal fungi prime systemic defense pathways that operate independently of, and synergistically with, aboveground biological control, offering a belowground dimension of resilience that has been comparatively underexploited in mainstream pest management. Climate change is simultaneously reshaping pest phenology, range and voltinism, intensifying the urgency of ecologically grounded alternatives to systems heavily reliant on chemical control. The review identifies persistent knowledge gaps around scaling farm-level diversification to landscape and regional levels, mechanistic understanding of soil–plant–insect feedback loops under warming and drought, and the socio-economic barriers that slow farmer adoption of agroecological practice. It concludes that durable climate resilience in plant protection will depend on integrating these three pillars within regionally adapted, multi-scale management frameworks rather than treating them as independent technical fixes.