Farming must address the key challenge of increasing production of affordable food to meet global demand, whilst minimising environmental impacts. Crops affected by invertebrate pests, weeds or diseases (collectively ‘pests’) are less productive and plant protection products pose an environmental hazard. IPM Decisions has accelerated uptake of computer-based systems to support decisions by farmers and advisers on Integrated Pest Management (IPM).
Increased uptake of Decision Support Systems (DSS) should lead to improved decisions making on the farm, which would result in improved timing and targeting of plant protection products, and their integration with non-chemical methods of pest control. This should ultimately lead to a reduction in the application of plant protection products (and potentially also fertilisers) with a consequent benefit for society in terms of reduced diffuse pollution and reduced environmental harm.
Project Aim: Increase the impact of decision support systems for integrated pest management.
Objective 1: Increase user access to, and uptake of, IPM DSS
Objective 2: Quantify the benefits of using DSS
Objective 3: Foster DSS innovation through the Platform, to secure longevity of impact
DSS cover a diverse range of decision tools including pest monitoring and treatment thresholds, forecasting pest density and damage, and systems for comparing treatment options; all of which can support implementation of IPM. We are addressing constraints on DSS use by creating a pan-European DSS Platform and associated ‘IPM Decisions Network’; the latter forming a community of DSS users and wider IPM stakeholders. The Platform is a web-based framework on which models/DSS for farmers and advisers, and tools to help evaluate, modify or construct DSS can be run. To bring about the behavioural changes needed for IPM to be implemented more fully, the project is using insights from the interactions with stakeholders to guide Platform design.
The functionality required to integrate priority DSS with the Platform ensures general applicability of the Platform for DSS addressing many key crops and pests.
Uptake and impact from the project is driven by accelerating innovation and delivering economic advantage to users:
• Farmers and advisers - gain a simple ‘one-stop shop’ to find and run DSS
• Applied researchers or advisors - gain ability to adopt DSS developed in other countries and test/compare them for their regional conditions.
• Researchers - gain ability to adapt decision models to their regional conditions and rapidly evaluate the effect of the changes.
• DSS Developers - gain a ‘shop window’ to access more end users, and resources to accelerate DSS innovation.
Conclusion
The project has created an online IPM Decisions Platform, facilitated open access, and consultation of DSS for improving IPM strategies across Europe. The platform provides default weather data to run models, and is adaptable to enable integration of new DSS, and enable external platforms to use weather and DSS resources from IPM Decisions.
Alongside creation of the platform, incentives and barriers to uptake have been identified, and processes for overcoming barriers have been initiated.
