Plant disease management plays an important role in achieving the sustainable development goals of the United Nations (UN) such as food security, human health, socio-economic improvement, resource conservation and ecological resilience.  However, technologies available are often limited due to different interests between producers and society and lacks of proper understanding of economic thresholds and the complex interactions among ecology, productivity and profitability.  A comprehensive synergy and conflict evaluation of economic, sociological and ecological effects with technologies, productions and evolutionary principles as main components should be used to guide sustainable disease management that aims to mitigate crop and economic losses in the short term while maintaining functional farm ecosystem in the long term.  Consequently, there should be an increased emphasis on technology development, public education and information exchange among governments, researchers, producers and consumers to broaden the options for disease management in the future.

Plant disease management faces ever-growing challenges due to: (i) increasing demands for total, safe and diverse foods to support the booming global population and its improving living standards; (ii) reducing production potential in agriculture due to competition for land in fertile areas and exhaustion of marginal arable lands; (iii) deteriorating ecology of agro-ecosystems and depletion of natural resources; and (iv) increased risk of disease epidemics resulting from agricultural intensification and monocultures. Future plant disease management should aim to strengthen food security for a stable society while simultaneously safeguarding the health of associated ecosystems and reducing dependency on natural resources. To achieve these multiple functionalities, sustainable plant disease management should place emphases on rational adaptation of resistance, avoidance, elimination and remediation strategies individually and collectively, guided by traits of specific host-pathogen associations using evolutionary ecology principles to create environmental (biotic and abiotic) conditions favorable for host growth and development while adverse to pathogen reproduction and evolution.