Community of Innovators: Pest Surveillance
A community of innovators leading the way towards a sustainable, food-secure future
In the second part of our 'Community of Innovators' blog series, we're looking at how Warwick researchers are developing crop pest and disease surveillance technologies in the context of a changing climate.
Effective pest and disease surveillance for UK growers
Pests and diseases have always threatened crop yields and harvest quality. They also pose challenges in amenity and forestry settings, and climate change is altering their migration and emergence patterns, making crop protection ever more challenging. In addition, movement of plant material through trade and transport can facilitate the rapid spread of pests and diseases.
Prevention is always better than cure, and for growers this means being able to understand the level of pest and disease threat before their crops become infected.
Surveillance tools help growers to make decisions about what to plant, when to plant, what control strategies to use, and when to target them. This knowledge is the difference between a crop鈥檚 success or failure, making surveillance tools absolutely fundamental to front-line agriculture. Warwick researchers are at the forefront of developing the next generation of surveillance tools.
Quality pest surveillance relies on accessible and reliable diagnostics, which includes tests to detect or confirm plant disease incidence. Developing diagnostic tests relies on understanding pathogen biology and genomics. At Warwick, plant pathologist Prof. John Clarkson and his team are world leaders in the biology and detection of Fusarium, which is a soilborne disease affecting many crops鈥攚ith very few control options and generally poor genetic resistance. Their work with Fusarium in onion investigated the genetic traits which differentiated pathogenic Fusarium from other non-pathogenic Fusarium subspecies (which are abundant in soils). The pathogenic traits were identified using genomics鈥攚orking closely with other teams at Warwick鈥攁nd the results were used to develop a molecular diagnostic test for the disease in soil. Working with and other industry partners, a rapid, in-field test is now accessible to growers to test for Fusarium inoculum. By avoiding high risk areas, a grower can save money and resources from being wasted.
Pest and disease forecasting is also a key phytosecurity surveillance tool, incorporating mathematical modelling with incidence data to predict pest or disease spread using factors like pest life-cycles, weather patterns, and trade routes. The Warwick Crop Centre is involved in a new EU Horizon project, with 15 partners across Europe, to advance the use of mathematical modelling and data technologies to identify the source of outbreaks and track invasive diseases at earlier stages. The project is called PhytoPRISM and is led by Dr Stephen Parnell, a plant disease epidemiologist at Warwick. The collaboration will inform the UK government and growers of necessary phytosanitary measures to block, reduce and manage the impact of biological invasions across agriculture, forestry and amenity sectors.
Prof. Rosemary Collier, OBE, is renowned for her work in developing monitoring systems for pest activity in vegetable crops. With her wide experience of insect ecology, her studies have included the development of weather-based forecasting systems and the use of remote-sensing devices. Her work informs growers of developing pest pressures, which helps them make decisions about control options and whether pesticide treatment is necessary. Prof. Collier鈥檚 work also promotes the use of citizen science as a tool to support surveillance, especially for invasive insect species which arrive from other countries鈥攅arly detection of unusual activity helps the industry to map pest activity as well as to develop prompt responses. Armed with the best possible information about impending threats, growers are able to apply integrated pest and disease management to maximise profitability whilst also maximising environmental sustainability.
Researchers at Warwick are beacons on the forefront of biosecurity, developing tools which translate into tangible decisions, helping growers to navigate changing pest and disease risks in informed ways.
