27 February 2016 – CABI scientist Dr Stefan Toepfer ran a five-day course on Integrated Pest Management (IPM) at the graduate school of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) in Beijing, China from 22-26 February 2016.
Dr Toepfer is a visiting professor at the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture – CABI Joint Laboratory, which is located in the Institute of Plant Protection of CAAS. In total, 25 MSc students and young scientists attended the training.
The course covered IPM topics like, diagnosis and monitoring of plant health problems, prevention of pest, diseases and weeds, population dynamics of pest and natural enemies, integrated control measures, and the design and implementation of IPM programmes.
The main objective of the course was to update the students skills and knowledge in IPM with a focus on keeping pests below levels that cause economic damage. The training took into account:
- the ecology of crops, pests, and natural enemies;
- sociological and economic aspects of IPM; and
- international, national and local standards, as well as compliance criteria.
The students developed and presented 13 guides on making pest management decisions. This included lists of plant protection measures following International Organisation for Biocontrol standards. Based on a traffic light system, these green and yellow lists are comprehensive selections of the most appropriate preventive and curative control methods for specific pest-crop combinations.
Around half of the course was presented as interactive lectures, with the remaining half of the time spent on hands-on practical exercises. Students had to take examinations to complete the course and all the students passed. This was the second time the course was implemented (the first was in 2015). It will run again in early 2017.
Contact Stefan Toepfer (s.toepfer@cabi.org) or Julian Chen (jlchen@ippcaas.cn) for details about next years course.
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