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It’s been estimated that up to 40% of food crops globally are lost to crop insect pests and diseases each year, translating to losses of over $220 billion. With the agricultural sector facing increasing pressure to phase out its use of synthetic pesticides, ecological pest management approaches, which combine developments in ecological science and advances in technology with a broad range of cultural and biological control methods, are gaining significant momentum.
Ecological management of crop insect pests: Challenges and solutions provides a detailed overview of these approaches. The book summarises the latest ecological science on understanding plant-pest interactions and then shows how this understanding can be used to design agronomic practices to disrupt pest life cycles and deter them away from cash crops. The book also reviews key challenges and opportunities in the ecological management of key insect pests of cereals, tree fruit, sweet potato and cotton.
Dr Geoff Gurr is Distinguished Professor of Applied Ecology at Charles Sturt University, Australia. With over 200 publications, Professor Gurr is internationally renowned for his research in developing ecologically-based strategies in areas such as pest management in agriculture. He has been named as Australia’s leading researcher on ‘Insects & Arthropods’ and has won Engagement Australia’s award for Outstanding Research Engagement for work that has been deployed across tens of thousands of farms in Australia and beyond.
Part 1 Fundamentals
- 1.The impact of insect pests on crop production: an overview: Myron Zalucki, The University of Queensland, Australia;
- 2.Understanding and exploiting crop insect pest navigation, habitat and host plant location/selection strategies: Maya Evenden, University of Alberta, Canada;
- 3.Understanding and exploiting how crop insect pests interact with host plants and their environment: Jamin Ali, Jilin Agricultural University, China;
- 4.Non-crop habitat management for pest regulation: semi-natural vegetation, hedgerows, flower strips, and other features: Anna DiPaola, University of California-Davis, USA;
- 5.Ecological factors influencing the epidemiology and management of vector-disseminated plant diseases: Alexander Purcell, University of California-Berkeley, USA;
- 6.Climate change and insect pest management: Subodh Adhikari, Utah State University, USA;
- 7.Adopting ecological approaches to pest management: barriers and opportunities: Anne Johnson, Charles Sturt University, Australia;
Part 2 Advances in ecological approaches
- 8.Advances in automated detection, identification and quantification of crop insect pests: ‘smart traps’: Donato Romano, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Italy;
- 9.Integrated pest management (IPM) and agroecosystems: Adeney de Freitas Bueno, Embrapa, Brazil;
- 10.Promoting natural enemies of crop insect pests: Raymond Cloyd, Kansas State University, USA;
- 11.The role of soil management in ecological management of crop insect pests: Andrei Alyokhin, University of Maine, USA;
- 12.Spatio-temporal distancing: the role of rotations in ecological management of crop insect pests: Thomas Döring, University of Bonn, Germany;
- 13.Spatio-temporal distancing: the role of companion cropping, intercropping and cover cropping in ecological management of crop insect pests: Luuk Croijmans, Wageningen University & Research, The Netherlands;
- 14.The role of plant volatiles in ecological insect pest management: David James, Washington State University, USA;
- 15.Molecular ecology approaches to understanding and managing crop insect pests: Jason M. Schmidt, University of Georgia, USA;
Part 3 Case studies
- 16.Challenges and opportunities in the ecological management of aphids in cereals: Norman Elliott, USDA-ARS, USA;
- 17.Challenges and opportunities in the ecological management of key insect pests of tree fruit: Tim Beliën, Proefcentrum Fruitteelt VZW, Belgium;
- 18.Challenges and opportunities in the ecological management of key insect pests of rice: Zengrong Zhu, Zhejiang University, China;
- 19.Challenges and opportunities in the ecological management of key insect pests of tropical crops: maize: Frank Chidawanyika, International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (icipe), Kenya;
- 20.Challenges and opportunities in the ecological management of key insect pests of tropical crops: sweetpotato: Gadi Reddy, USDA-ARS, USA;
- 21.Challenges and opportunities in the ecological management of key insect pests of cotton: Yanhui Lu, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, China;