Horticulture is a diverse sector and, as such, the development and deployment of integrated pest management systems (IPM) has largely been governed primarily on the ability to control the growing environment.

In crops where the environment can be partially controlled, such as glasshouses, polytunnels and mushroom production facilities the use of parasitoids, predators and microbial agents to manage insect pests is now commonplace as is the use of insecticidal soaps.

In the management of fungal diseases, more biological products are becoming available and the knowledge on how best to deploy them is increasing, leading to better crop protection outcomes.

Within the field production sector, the vagaries of the weather and lower temperatures and humidity tend to reduce the effectiveness of some integrated pest management approaches.

Brassicas planted ahead of the horticultural demonstration at Teagasc Oak Park.

Research has largely focused on the development of decision support tools to aid growers in making optimal crop protection decisions, as pest observation is a critical component of IPM systems.

Monitoring

In recent years, Teagasc has been monitoring the occurrence and epidemiology of key insect pests in the field vegetable sector, including Carrot Root Fly, Cabbage Root Fly and Willow Carrot aphid.

The life stage timings of these key pests have been compared to the outputs of decision support tools, which utilise accumulation of degree-days to predict the key activity periods of these pests.

The output of this work will be available, as will the opportunity to learn how to identify these pests from soil samples and sticky traps.

Increasingly, crop rotation is an important IPM tool in preventing peat and disease carryover from crop to another.

As part of the Best4Soil project (www.best4soil.eu), Teagasc was involved in the development of a decision support tool to help growers and agronomists visualise the potential carryover of key soil-borne diseases and nematodes in their crop rotation.

The tool has information on 70 crops, including 21 different cover crops and their interaction with 137 soil-borne disease and 40 plant pathogenic nematode species. A demonstration on how to use this database will be available on the day.

Finally, Teagasc is interested in establishing the type and extent of current IPM strategies being utilised in Irish crop production.

The AgSustain project will examine the impact of pest management practices on the economic and environmental sustainability of Irish horticulture.

It comes at a crucial time for growers, given the ambitious target of pesticide reduction included in the Farm to Fork strategy against the background of significant crop input costs in the last 18 months.

People can access the survey here.