The decision in 1986, on an action plan to reduce pesticide use in Denmark by 50% led to increased research on the potential of reducing dosages. A decision support system (PC‐Plant Protection), developed by The Danish Institute for Plant and Soil Science, implements this research. It combines a detailed use of threshold values to support decisions on treatment need, choice of pesticides and the appropriate dosage for actual problems in cereals. The pest and disease module within the system has been available commercially since 1993 and up to the end of April 1995, 2000 licences have been issued for its use at agricultural schools and by advisers and farmers. The recommendation model for pest and disease control has been validated in field trials since 1990. The validation has shown that the model is able to provide recommendations for the control of pests and diseases to a satisfactory level, without affecting farmers' gross margins. The model was able to adjust pesticide use to large yearly variations and the average amount of pesticides in the plots treated according to the model was well below that in the reference plots and in the commonly used strategies in Denmark.
The Danish decision‐support system for plant protection, PC‐Plant Protection, has been in commercial use since 1993 and has proved reliable in reducing use of plant protection products without affecting net returns. One of the factors in the fungicide dosage estimate is cultivar susceptibility to diseases. However, the disease susceptibility data is not made visible to the user. In order to make the data available to the user together with other important cultivar characteristics, a relational database has been designed and incorporated into the decision‐support system. The user can view cultivar characteristics both during the selection of a cultivar at farm planning and during the use of the decision‐support system to control diseases in the season. Both qualitative and quantitative data can be stored and the data can be grouped and prioritized for display. The database is intended to be used as a foundation in the development of a decision‐support system for the selection of a cultivar on any given farm.
At the Danish Research Centre for Plant Protection, under the Information System Program, a Pest and Disease Monitoring System (PDM) and a Plant Protection Information System (PPIS) are being developed and maintained with the objectives of recording the pest and disease status of the country and integrating information pertaining to optimal plant protection measures, pests and diseases, spraying techniques, pesticides and beneficial organisms. PDM was initiated in 1983 and covers five pests and 11 diseases in seven groups of crops. Monitoring is done regularly by voluntary participants during the growing season and the system includes individual farm recommendations. In 1989 there were 692 participants in the programme. PPIS was initiated in 1987 and will be tested in 1990. The system integrates optimal plant protection strategies for individual farms with all relevant information on plant protection.
A telephone‐based interactive voice response system (audiotex) integrated to a relational database has been implemented in Denmark for monitoring and control of pests in spring barley, winter barley, winter wheat, field pea and sugar beet. The system has been implemented using Powerline II Voice Response System and Inforniix‐SQL RDBMS on a Commodore 486–25C PC under MS‐DOS 5.0. The system is programmed in Microsoft C Version 6.0 with Informix ESQL/C Version 2.10 and Powerline II C Commando Version 1.2 programming interfaces. The database contains information pertaining to the farmer, the agronomic conditions of the field, individual field observations, recommendation model constants and the weather data. The user enters the field observations using a touch‐tone telephone and prerecorded messages are used to guide the user during the data entry and for advising control measures. From the beginning of June to the end of July 1992, 129 farmers with 486 fields were offered the audiotex service. Usability analysis of the system showed that the system was simple to use and provided timely advice on control measures. Farmers indicated that they would continue to use the audiotex. Compared to an earlier recommendation service, which required 24–36 h for control recommendations to reach the farmers through postal services, the audiotex provides control recommendations immediately after data entry on the telephone.
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