Impacts on Integrated Pest Management - Climate Resilient Agriculture for Ensuring Food Security - page 207

such as pest reporting synchronized via mobile
phone messages or the precise assessment of soil
health across farms. They may also be imple-
mented on a much larger scale, as with the remote
sensing of pest outbreaks or stresses.
The key to the successful implementation of
any of the technologies highlighted will be their
fl exibility to integrate with and improve other
aspects of the CHM strategy. It must be empha-
sized that enabling conditions have to be in place
for farmers and food producers to take full advan-
tage of these technologies.

precision agriculture without any technological
aides. They know the variability in their fi elds
and try to use certain inputs on a refi ned scale.
They are well positioned to improve if the infor-
mation is made available on what to do, where,
and when, in response to the needs of small but
variable land plots.

11.3.2.3 Pest Risk Analysis
Understanding the shifts in pest range or the
intensifi cation of pest damage and predicting
where adaptation measures may be required are
key goals of any strategy to manage plant health
in a region. Pest phenology modeling and risk
mapping using Geographic Information Systems
(GIS) (Sporleder et al. 2008 ) are innovative tools
to assess and understand how pests may spread
across regions. Process-based phenology models
use a number of functions to describe temperature-
driven processes, such as development, mortality,
and reproduction in insect species. They produce
full life-table parameters to predict key popula-
tion parameters such as net reproduction rate,
mean generation time, intrinsic and fi nite rate of
increase, and doubling time. For an analysis in
space of the risk of pests, generic risk indices
(index for establishment, generation number, and
activity index) can be visualized in GIS maps
using advanced Insect Life Cycle Modeling tools
and software (Sporleder et al. 2009 ).

11.3.2.1 Remote Sensing
The ability to accurately assess the health of
agroecosystems is crucial to determining the
need for and effects of any CHM strategy. Remote
sensing is one emerging tool available to IPM for
ecosystem surveillance. Remote sensing is a very
fl exible tool with the potential to offer new
insights into crop health at temporal and spatial
scales that would have required intensive human
efforts in the past. Remote sensing has the poten-
tial to be an excellent tool for large-scale assess-
ment and management of crop health. Different
forms of spectral assessment are being used in
predicting the development of disease prior to
symptom expression, in crop breeding for the
early detection of resistance, and for pest assess-
ment in ecosystems.

11.3.2.2 Precision Crop Protection
Although this is often considered expensive and
primarily useful for large farm operations, it is
adaptable in developing countries with the neces-
sary infrastructure and larger farm units. Precision
technology can be used to accurately determine
the presence and impact of pests on a crop in a
particular fi eld or part of a fi eld. Pests can then be
mapped to GPS coordinates to target the delivery
of specifi c resistant varieties, biocontrol agents,
or pesticides. Precision technology can have an
impact in extensive production systems (i.e., for
rice, maize, and wheat) where it allows the opti-
mum use of inputs for CHM and crop productiv-
ity while reducing the need for large-scale
sampling and extension input (Oerke et al. 2010 ).
Many small farmers already practice a form of

11.3.2.4 Early Disease Diagnosis
Early detection of the appearance of diseases or
their causal agents followed by rapid and accu-
rate identifi cation is essential if correct control
measures are to be deployed. Nucleic acid
sequencing and advances in DNA bar coding,
microarray technologies, and lateral fl ow devices
promise to revolutionize plant diagnostics in the
near future (Boonham et al. 2008 ). DNA micro-
arrays printed on the bottom of an Eppendorf,
which can be read with a regular document scan-
ner, have the capability to detect many pathogens
simultaneously. Little training is required and
thus the technology can be implemented in any
laboratory without the need of specialized or
expensive equipment. DNA bar coding, on the
other hand, relies on the generic amplifi cation