Integrated Pest Management (IPM) offers a suite of ways by which to reduce the need for pesticide use, thus minimising environmental damage and pathogen resistance build-up in crop production. Farmers and agronomists active in the Scottish spring barley sector were surveyed to determine the extent to which they currently use or are open to implementing three IPM measures-varietal disease resistance, crop rotation, and forecasting disease pressure-in order to control three important fungal diseases. Overall, the survey results demonstrate that farmers and agronomists are open to using the three IPM techniques. However, gaps between actual and perceived recent practice were large: despite over 60% of farmers stating that they sowed varieties highly resistant to Rhynchosporium or Ramularia, less than one third of reportedly sown varieties were highly resistant to these diseases. Similarly, over 80% of farmers indicated that they used crop rotations, yet 66% of farmers also reported sowing consecutive barley often/always. Further research is needed in order to understand why these gaps exist, and how they can be reduced in future in order to increase IPM uptake and optimise pesticide use.
Restrictions on social interaction and travel due to the COVID-19 pandemic have affected how researchers approach fieldwork and data collection. Whilst online focus groups have received attention since the 2000s as a method for qualitative data collection, relatively little of the relevant literature appears to have made use of now ubiquitous video calling software and synchronous, interactive discussion tools. Our own experiences in organising fieldwork aimed at understanding the impact of different ‘future-proofing’ strategies for the European agri-food system during this period resulted in several methodological changes being made at short notice. We present an approach to converting in-person focus group to a virtual methodology and provide a checklist for researchers planning their own online focus groups. Our findings suggest data are comparable to in-person focus groups and factors influencing data quality during online focus groups can be safeguarded. There are several key steps, both before and during the focus groups, which can be taken to ensure the smooth running of such events. We share our reflections on this approach and provide a resource for other researchers moving to online-only data collection.
The contribution of seafood to global food security is being increasingly highlighted in policy. However, the extent to which such claims are supported in the current food security literature is unclear. This review assesses the extent to which seafood is represented in the recent food security literature, both individually and from a food systems perspective, in combination with terrestrially-based production systems. The results demonstrate that seafood remains under-researched compared to the role of terrestrial animal and plant production in food security. Furthermore, seafood and terrestrial production remain siloed, with very few papers addressing the combined contribution or relations between terrestrial and aquatic systems. We conclude that far more attention is needed to the specific and relative role of seafood in global food security and call for the integration of seafood in a wider interdisciplinary approach to global food system research.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.