Integrating advanced Earth Observation and environmental information for sustainable pest and disease management
Forecasting and monitoring insect pests and disease outbreaks is vital for protecting China’s economically important agricultural sector. By combining information gathered from Earth Observation and environmental data, CABI and partners will design innovative data products and communications tools to help decision makers sustainably manage wheat yellow rust and migratory locusts. A biopesticide development model will also be developed to help end-users decide when to use a biopesticide over a chemical pesticide.
Improving the livelihoods of smallholder maize farmers around the Mekong
After rice, maize is the most important crop in the Mekong Delta. Insects including the Asian corn borer are a major threat to production. Fear of crop losses, together with a lack of alternative measures, can result in overuse of pesticides – posing health risks to farmers, consumers and the agro-ecosystem. This project will establish local production of an affordable biological control agent, the parasitic wasp trichogramma, which kills the eggs of maize pests.
Biological control of the Spotted wing Drosophila – Drosophila suzukii
Drosophila suzukii Matsumura (Diptera: Drosophilidae), a fruit fly from East Asia, is now a serious economic pest of soft fruits and berries across Europe, the Americas and North Africa. In this project we are focusing on finding natural enemies (parasitoids) of the pest to introduce into Europe. This involves surveys for parasitoids where it originated and experiments in quarantine in Switzerland to investigate their taxonomy, performance and specificity.