Experimental verification and development of EPIPRE, a supervised disease and pest management system for wheat

Abstract

From 1981 to 1984, 27 experiments were carried out to evaluate and develop the EPIPRE system for supervised pest and disease management in wheat. The results of these experiments led to an adjustment of the EPIPRE recommendation for control of Septoria spp. After this adjustment only minor differences remained between EPIPRE and the general recommendation in the number and type of sprays and in net yields. The EPIPRE advice models for stripe rust, leaf rust, mildew and cereal aphids were reliable. More research is needed on Septoria spp. and the modelling of pesticide action and efficiency. Reduction in pesticide application as a result of using EPIPRE was less than was expected at the start of the EPIPRE project. A reason for this is that pesticide use in wheat in the Netherlands is low in comparison with surrounding countries. Application of sprays above the level of EPIPRE recommendation were often found to be economically worthwhile, but their economic advantage, compared to the adapted EPI-PRE recommendation or to the general recommendation, was small and did not justify intensive, high-input crop protection strategies. EPIPRE had positive educational effects, but probably few short-term economic benefits for the farmer. This limits the participation in the advice system. In the future the EPIPRE information on disease and pest management will be incorporated into a computerized management system for wheat growing, that comprises all crop husbandry measures from sowing to harvest.

The economics of reduced‐rate insecticide applications to control aphids in winter wheat

“…Control thresholds must be dynamic (rather than fixed as is often the case) to allow for variations in spraying economics. Models such as that of EPIPRE (Reinink, 1986) and the one used here (Mann & Wratten, 1991) have been developed to allow for such variations. At present such models can examine the economic value of reduced-doses to some extent, but have not been used for this purpose because data on changes in insecticide efficiency with dose-rate are not usually available.…”

Surveys of cereal diseases and pests in the Netherlands. 1. Weather and winter wheat cropping during 1974–1986

“…In Table 1 the number of fields and the number of times the fields were surveyed are given. If the survey was carried out more than once during a year, usually the same Year 1974Year 1975Year 1976Year 1977Year 1978Year 1979Year 1980Year 1981Year 1982Year 1983Year 1984Year 1985Year 1986 (Zadoks, 1981 andRijsdijk, 1983;Rijsdijk et al, 1989;Rijsdijk, 1983 andBlokker, 1983;Reinink, 1984 and1986;Rossing et al, 1985, Drenth et al, 1989Drenth and Stol, 1990) for trouble shooting, when each time the observers visited different fields. In following papers, the occurrence of diseases and pests at first-second node stage and at milky-ripe will be reported.…”

Framework to support decisions on chemical pest control under uncertainty, applied to aphids and brown rust in winter wheat

“…Summary of sources of uncertainty in the decision model and their probability distributiona developed previously (Rossing et al, 1993a The structure of the model is based on part of EPIPRE, a computer-based advisory system for aphid and disease control in winter wheat (Drenth et al , 1989;Daamen, 1991b). As this system has been tested extensively (Reinink, 1986;Drenth et al, 1989), the system model is assumed to be valid.…”