Course description
A Practical Guide to Pest & Disease Management
Pests and diseases are one of the most important factors affecting crop production. Proper management is critical in order to avoid damages, meet regulatory standards, protect the environment and decrease pesticide resistance.
Forming part of New AG Academy'sBest Practices for Product Application within Agriculture Series, this course focuses on pest and disease management in vegetables, greenhouse crops and flowers. However, the principles that are discussed in this course are relevant also for many other crops.
An integrated pest and disease management approach is discussed throughout the course. We will learn methods to identify pests and diseases in the field, methods to avoid the occurrence of pests and diseases, principles of biological control and pesticides, their properties and how to wisely use them.
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Suitability - Who should attend?
This course has been developed for agronomists wanting to boost their career and growers looking to learn how to avoid repeating pest and disease problems in your crops to minimize costs.
Outcome / Qualification etc.
- Develop skills in detecting and identifying crop pests and diseases
- Acquire knowledge of weed identification and weed control practices
- Acquire skills to develop IPM (Integrated Pest Management) programs
- Understand the spray application techniques and equipment
- Understand pesticide properties, activity and modes of action
- Develop skills in practices and strategies to how to avoid, manage and control pests and diseases
- Acquire knowledge of biological pest and disease control
This course has been assessed by a Certified Crop Advisor and awarded 13.5 CEU credits.
Training Course Content
Module 1: Pests and their identification
- Introduction to insects and pests
- Pests life cycle, effect of the environmental conditions, GDD Damages caused by pests
- Detection of pests – what to look for?
- Scouting and monitoring
- Scouting tools, aids and methods
- Recognizing feeding patterns
- Recognizing pest signs
- Phytotoxicity
- Whitefly
- Thrips
- Aphids
- Spider mites
Module 2: Plant diseases and their identification
- What is a disease?
- Damages caused by plant diseases
- Disease causes – biotic vs. abiotic
- Disease identification
- The complexity
- Steps in the diagnosis
- Signs and symptoms
- Effect of the environmental conditions
- Fungi – description, symptoms, spread, common fungal diseases and their hosts
- Downey mildew
- Powdery mildew
- Septoria
- Early blight
- White rust
- Phytophthora blight
- Fusarium wilt
- Pythium
- Rhizoctonia
- Bacteria – description, symptoms, spread, common bacterial diseases
- Agrobacterium crown gall
- Bacterial soft rots
- Bacterial leaf spot
- Viruses – description, symptoms, hosts, spread, common viral diseases
- TSWV
- CMV
Module 3: Pest management and control
- Introduction to pest control
- Economic damage threshold
- Measures to manage, avoid and control pests
- Cultural methods
- Crop rotation
- Managing irrigation and fertilization
- Controlling the environment
- Tunnels
- Greenhouse structure
- Anti-insect nets
- Traps and pheromones
- Sanitation
- Weather and pest modelling
- Planting dates and planting densities
- Introduction to beneficial insects
- Introduction to pesticides and biopesticides
Module 4: Management and control of plant diseases
- Introduction and principles of disease control
- The disease triangle
- Avoiding the pathogen
- Disease life cycle
- Dissemination and dispersal pathogens
- Physical dissemination
- Intervention in the disease life cycle
- Exclusion
- Sanitation
- Water disinfection
- Quarantine
- Other methods
- Avoidance
- Selecting crop
- The planting site
- Planting time and density
- Irrigation management
- Fertilization management
- Other methods
- Eradication
- Different practices
- Crop rotation
- Alternative hosts
- Soil/media sterilization – steam, Metam sodium, heat
- Protection
- Mulches
- Controlling the environment
- Sanitation in the greenhouse
- Disinfectants
Module 5: Weeds and their management
- Introduction to weeds and how they affect crop production
- Competition
- Critical competition period
- Invasive weeds
- Types of weeds
- Annual weeds
- Biennial weeds
- Perennial weeds
- Identification of weeds
- Integrated weed management
- The effect of the environmental condition
- Practices to avoid weeds
- Herbicides
- Preemergence herbicides
- Postemergence herbicides
Module 6: Pesticides and their properties
- What are pesticides?
- Chemical pesticides
- Biopesticides
- The pesticide label and how to read it
- Handling precautions
- The active ingredient
- MOA symbols pesticide formulations
- Modes of action of insecticides
- Modes of action of fungicides
- Modes of action of biopesticides
- Contact pesticides
- Systemic pesticides
- Resistance to pesticides
Module 7: Biological control
- Introduction to biological control
- Techniques of biological control Augmentation
- Of existing natural enemies
- Inoculative release
- Inductive release
- Selection and genetic engineering
- Classical biological control
- Conservation
- Biological control agents
- Biochemicals
- Biological control of pests
- Predatory insects
- Parasitic insects
- Consideration for application of beneficial insects products
- Aphidius colemani
- Predatory mites
- Predatory bugs
- Viral biopesticides
- Fungal biopesticides
- Nematode biopesticides
- Biological control of plant diseases
- Mechanisms of biological protection
- Bio fungicides
- Agrobacterium
- Trichoderma
- Bacteriophage
- Predation by insects Biological control of weeds
Module 8: Spray application techniques
- Pesticide type and why it matters for the spray application
- Contact pesticides
- Systemic insecticides
- Translaminar insecticides
- The spray application - droplet size
- Spray drift and how to avoid it
- Sprayer types
- Hydraulic sprayers
- Low-volume sprayers
- Selecting a nozzle
- Spray patterns
- Spray angle
- Spray distance
- Spray pressure
- Sprayer capacity
Module 9: The spray program
- The water quality
- Water acidity
- Water mineral content
- Turbidity
- How to solve water quality problems
- Spray calculations – active ingredients, application rates, sprayer volume, speed
- Selection of pesticides – considerations Planning in advance
- Additional properties of the pesticide that should be considered
- The weather
- Calibration of the spray equipment
Why choose PTI
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