Smart DSS for IPM in Protected Horticulture

Project information
Greenhouse crops, as well as the other horticultural crops are subject to strong market requirements regarding the visual quality of products and very high levels of pest risks. This has led to intensive use of pesticides worldwide with very high indexes of treatment frequency but this “all chemical” plant protection strategy exhibits nowadays serious limits due to the reduction in available active ingredients (Ecophyto 2018 in France, REACH internationally) and to the increase in pest resistance phenomena. Despite strong expectations about their socio-economics and environmental issues, integrated pest management strategies are slow to take a sufficiently robust concrete form to be widely adopted. The reason for this delay lies mainly in the fact that the fundamental understanding of agro-ecosystem functioning at the local farm level appeared much more challenging than had been expected even in greenhouses. Indeed, multiple unexpected interactions between pests, beneficials and plants are observed at the farm level when « truly integrated » pest management is implemented making the targeted ecosystem services inoperative. We assume that the only way to build a robust IPM strategy is to design accurate tools to monitor and manage the spatiotemporal dynamics of all the key biotic components. This implies development of tools for risk assessment and assistance in decision-making, specifically dedicated to farmers or advisers. Within this framework, this project aims at developing, optimizing and validating DSS tools in a real context of greenhouse cropping system, namely: - To develop tools to assess the health status of crops via the sampling and information analysis of main biotic factors from the monitoring of European network of experimental stations and farms; - To promote the acquisition and implementation of expertise (knowledge) necessary for decision-making adapted to local specificities and constraints; - To build or optimize predictive models to anticipate pest and natural enemies dynamics in real cropping situation thanks systemic trials carried out in Europe; - To develop decision support systems and tools relying on the re-definition of local, regional, and European decision rules (DR) taking into account socio-economic aspects of farms. This intelligent system will be based on the IS S@M developed so far on ornamentals in France and Italy. (http://sam.sophia.inra.fr/sam/NOUVEAU_SITE/pages/Accueil/accueil.php?langue=fr)"
Project partners: 
Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique
Fundación Cajamar
Julius Kühn-Institute
Fundacion Cajamar Comunidad Valenciana
Project dates: 
January 2016 to December 2018
Contact
Contact person: 
Christine Poncet
Contact email: 
Contact organisation: 
Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique
Funding
Funding agency: 
Coordinated Integrated Pest Management in Europe
Total budget: 
k€398