Abstract
The rational control of harmful organisms for plants (pests) forms the basis of the integrated pest management (IPM), and is fundamental for ensuring agricultural productivity while maintaining economic and environmental sustainability. The high level of complexity of the decision processes linked to IPM requires careful evaluations, both economic and environmental, considering benefits and costs associated with a management action. Plant protection models and other decision tools (DTs) have assumed a key role in supporting decision-making process in pest management. The advantages of using DTs in IPM are linked to their capacity to process and analyze complex information and to provide outputs supporting the decision-making process. Nowadays, several DTs have been developed, tackling different issues, and have been applied in different climatic conditions and agricultural contexts. However, their use in crop management is restricted to only certain areas and/or to a limited group of users. In this paper, we review the current state-of-the-art related to DTs for IPM, investigate the main modelling approaches used, and the different fields of application. We also identify key drivers influencing their adoption and provide a set of critical success factors to guide the development and facilitate the adoption of DTs in crop protection.
Highlights
decision tools (DTs) can be fine-tuned for providing information that falls within the integrated pest management (IPM) framework and supporting the users in implementing the best strategies, tactics, and operations based on the available information [27]
The successful implementation of IPM requires proper incentives to farmers [131] and that information and tools for pest monitoring and for supporting decision-making are made available to professional users. These tools are designed to support the end-users by providing early warnings, facilitating pest monitoring, early diagnosis, forecasts about pest dynamics, and providing sound thresholds for the application of pesticides
In the framework of implementation of IPM, it becomes of paramount importance to provide to the end-users reliable, user-friendly, accessible, and up-to-date DTs while, if needed, adapting their outputs according to specific stakeholders’ needs and/or to specific local conditions
Summary
Integrated pest management (IPM) aims at protecting crops against pests (i.e., any species, strain, or biotype of plant, animal, or pathogen injurious to plants or plant products [1]) keeping pesticides and other interventions to levels that are economically and ecologically justified, reducing or minimizing the risks for humans and the environment [2,3]. To support decision-making (at strategic, tactical, and operational levels) in crop protection, a large number of tools predicting the dynamics of organisms harmful to crops and guiding their management have been developed, including population dynamics and epidemiological models, risk algorithms, intervention thresholds, decision rules, and decision support systems (DSSs). All these tools are collectively named decision tools (DTs) in this review. The aim is to investigate and define the combination of important factors required in order to reach the goal of effective DTs implementation, i.e., the so-called ‘critical success factors’ in IPM programs [30]
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