Herd immunity in crops? Lessons from human epidemiology

Esther Kuper; Mudassir Iqbal; Åsa Lankinen; Erik Andreasson; Johan A Stenberg

doi:10.1016/j.tplants.2025.12.005

Herd immunity in crops? Lessons from human epidemiology

Trends Plant Sci. 2026 Jan 5:S1360-1385(25)00359-0. doi: 10.1016/j.tplants.2025.12.005. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Esther Kuper¹, Mudassir Iqbal², Åsa Lankinen², Erik Andreasson², Johan A Stenberg³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Plant Protection Biology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Alnarp, 23456, Sweden. Electronic address: Esther.Kuper@slu.se.
² Department of Plant Protection Biology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Alnarp, 23456, Sweden.
³ Department of Plant Protection Biology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Alnarp, 23456, Sweden. Electronic address: Johan.Stenberg@slu.se.

PMID: 41494885
DOI: 10.1016/j.tplants.2025.12.005

Abstract

Herd immunity describes indirect disease protection in heterogeneous, partly immune populations. This concept is rarely discussed for agricultural crops, although crop heterogeneity can reduce pathogen transmission. We discuss disease suppression in diversified crop fields and illustrate how entire fields could benefit from treatment of individual plants, leading to herd immunity.

Keywords: crop diversification; herd immunity; integrated pest management; plant epidemiology.