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Agronomy
Special Issues
Pests, Pesticides, Pollinators and Sustainable Farming
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Pests, Pesticides, Pollinators and Sustainable Farming

A special issue of Agronomy (ISSN 2073-4395). This special issue belongs to the section "Pest and Disease Management".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 25 July 2024 | Viewed by 1724

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Antonios E. Tsagkarakis

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Crop Science, Agricultural University of Athens, 1155 Athens, Greece
Interests: integrated pest management; biological control; auchenorrhyncha; sustainable plant protection; pollinators; remote sensing; precision plant protection; productive entomology; apiculture; insects as proteins
Prof. Dr. Georgios Papadoulis

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Crop Science, Agricultural University of Athens, 1155 Athens, Greece
Interests: agricultural zoology and entomology
Dr. Argyro Kalaitzaki

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Institute for Olive Tree, Subtropical Crops & Viticulture, Hellenic Agricultural Organization “DEMETER", 73100 Chania, Greece
Interests: insect pest; insect parasitoids; population dynamics; vectors of xylella fastidiosa; mass trapping; monitoring; biological control; integrated pest management; smart tools in agriculture

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Crop pests can cause significant yield losses and threaten food supply and security. Relying solely on synthetic pesticides for pest control has proven ineffective and induces adverse effects on pollinators, biodiversity, environmental sustainability, and human health. Moreover, the overreliance on pesticides can foster resistance in pests, trigger outbreaks of other pest species, and adversely affect non-target organisms. To ensure improved control and ecological sustainability, it is essential to reduce synthetic pesticide usage. This can be achieved via the adoption of alternative and effective strategies that keep pest populations below the economic injury threshold, aligning with the objectives of the European Green Deal.

In this Special Issue, we aim to share knowledge on all aspects related to sustainable plant pest management systems that are also compatible with pollination services, adopting a "from farm to fork" approach.

Based on the above, we welcome original research articles and reviews, which will focus on:

  • Integrated and biological pest management systems of crops;
  • Use of pollinators for sustainable farming;
  • Smart plant protection systems (remote sensing, artificial intelligence, decision support systems);
  • Innovative pollinator-friendly pest control;
  • Biopesticides.

Dr. Antonios E. Tsagkarakis
Prof. Dr. Georgios Papadoulis
Dr. Argyro Kalaitzaki
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Agronomy is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • integrated pest management
  • biological control
  • precision plant protection
  • pollinators
  • remote sensing
  • biopesticides
  • sustainable pest management

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

9 pages, 458 KiB  
Article
Spring Abundance, Migration Patterns and Damaging Period of Aleyrodes proletella in the Czech Republic
by Kamil Holý and Kateřina Kovaříková
Agronomy 2024, 14(7), 1477; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy14071477 - 8 Jul 2024
Viewed by 196
Abstract
The cabbage whitefly has become an important pest on brassica vegetables in Central Europe. It does not destroy the affected plants, but the product becomes unmarketable, causing considerable economic losses. The pest is also difficult to control due to its way of life [...] Read more.
The cabbage whitefly has become an important pest on brassica vegetables in Central Europe. It does not destroy the affected plants, but the product becomes unmarketable, causing considerable economic losses. The pest is also difficult to control due to its way of life and because it develops resistance to some of the active components of insecticides. In organic farming systems, insecticides are strictly restricted, but neither predators nor whitefly parasitoids are able to keep the pest at a tolerable level. It is, therefore, necessary to become familiar with the whitefly’s life cycle and habits, including mass migration from winter hosts to vegetables. We inspected 44 rapeseed fields across the republic in the period 2014–2021 in order to find the connection between the presence of oilseed rape fields near vegetable growing areas (VGAs) and the abundance of the overwintering cabbage whiteflies. We also conducted regular weekly monitoring of whitefly occurrence in the main cultivation area of the Czech Republic (Polabí) with the aim of specifying critical data important for the successful control of this pest. We found that the cabbage whitefly incidences were many times higher in rapeseed fields close to VGAs compared to areas where the crops are not adjacent. The average number of whiteflies was 0.59 individuals per plant in VGA-1 (oilseed rape grown inside this area or up to 1 km far), 0.052 in VGA-2 (distance 3–10 km from vegetable fields) and 0.014 in VGA-3 (more than 20 km). In the extremely warm year 2016, the difference was up to sixty times. The first CW eggs laid on cruciferous vegetables were usually found around 20 May. The period of mass migration of CW adults to cruciferous vegetables was between 6 June and 2 August. At this time, vegetables are most vulnerable to damage. Successful control of the cabbage whitefly requires the use of fabric netting, combined with an insecticide as needed and trap plants as needed; the latter have to be destroyed before adult whiteflies hatch—typically in early July. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Pests, Pesticides, Pollinators and Sustainable Farming)
22 pages, 43859 KiB  
Article
Enhanced Tomato Pest Detection via Leaf Imagery with a New Loss Function
by Lufeng Mo, Rongchang Xie, Fujun Ye, Guoying Wang, Peng Wu and Xiaomei Yi
Agronomy 2024, 14(6), 1197; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy14061197 - 1 Jun 2024
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 333
Abstract
Pests have caused significant losses to agriculture, greatly increasing the detection of pests in the planting process and the cost of pest management in the early stages. At this time, advances in computer vision and deep learning for the detection of pests appearing [...] Read more.
Pests have caused significant losses to agriculture, greatly increasing the detection of pests in the planting process and the cost of pest management in the early stages. At this time, advances in computer vision and deep learning for the detection of pests appearing in the crop open the door to the application of target detection algorithms that can greatly improve the efficiency of tomato pest detection and play an important technical role in the realization of the intelligent planting of tomatoes. However, in the natural environment, tomato leaf pests are small in size, large in similarity, and large in environmental variability, and this type of situation can lead to greater detection difficulty. Aiming at the above problems, a network target detection model based on deep learning, YOLONDD, is proposed in this paper. Designing a new loss function, NMIoU (Normalized Wasserstein Distance with Mean Pairwise Distance Intersection over Union), which improves the ability of anomaly processing, improves the model’s ability to detect and identify objects of different scales, and improves the robustness to scale changes; Adding a Dynamic head (DyHead) with an attention mechanism will improve the detection ability of targets at different scales, reduce the number of computations and parameters, improve the accuracy of target detection, enhance the overall performance of the model, and accelerate the training process. Adding decoupled head to Head can effectively reduce the number of parameters and computational complexity and enhance the model’s generalization ability and robustness. The experimental results show that the average accuracy of YOLONDD can reach 90.1%, which is 3.33% higher than the original YOLOv5 algorithm and is better than SSD, Faster R-CNN, YOLOv7, YOLOv8, RetinaNet, and other target detection networks, and it can be more efficiently and accurately utilized in tomato leaf pest detection. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Pests, Pesticides, Pollinators and Sustainable Farming)
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13 pages, 1231 KiB  
Article
Developing an Effective Push–Pull System for Managing Outbreaks of the Invasive Pest Bactrocera dorsalis (Diptera: Tephritidae) in Nephelium lappaceum Orchards
by Jian Wen, Zhe Shan, Yan Zou, Xianwu Lin, Zhifu Cui, Rihui Yan and Fengqin Cao
Agronomy 2024, 14(5), 890; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy14050890 - 24 Apr 2024
Viewed by 852
Abstract
Outbreaks of the oriental fruit fly, Bactrocera dorsalis (Hendel), present significant challenges to global fruit production, necessitating effective control measures that minimize environmental risks and pesticide resistance. This study aimed to develop and evaluate the effectiveness of four distinct push–pull control strategies for [...] Read more.
Outbreaks of the oriental fruit fly, Bactrocera dorsalis (Hendel), present significant challenges to global fruit production, necessitating effective control measures that minimize environmental risks and pesticide resistance. This study aimed to develop and evaluate the effectiveness of four distinct push–pull control strategies for managing B. dorsalis outbreaks in a Nephelium lappaceum orchard. These strategies involved the inclusion of low-concentration abamectin, spraying repellent with a drone or manually, using methyl eugenol (ME) or food bait and employing either two types of attractants and repellents or a single type. The findings indicated that incorporating the low-concentration abamectin into the push–pull system, utilizing ME as an attractant instead of food lures and manually applying abamectin and attractants were all effective in reducing the B. dorsalis population size and minimizing fruit damage. While increasing the diversity of repellents and attractants enhanced the long-term effectiveness of the system, it did not result in a significant decrease in B. dorsalis population size or fruit damage rate compared to using a single repellent or attractant. In conclusion, the push–pull strategy emerged as a viable method for managing B. dorsalis outbreaks, offering potential benefits in reducing environmental risks and pesticide resistance. However, the study underscored the importance of the context-specific construction of push–pull strategies to optimize their effectiveness in orchard settings. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Pests, Pesticides, Pollinators and Sustainable Farming)
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Planned Papers

The below list represents only planned manuscripts. Some of these manuscripts have not been received by the Editorial Office yet. Papers submitted to MDPI journals are subject to peer-review.

Title: Longitudinal Analysis of Honey Bee Colony Health as a Function of Pesticide Exposure
Authors: Susan E. Kegley; Rosemarie Radford; Timothy J. Brown; Jeff Anderson; Darren Cox; Steve Ellis; Geoffrey W. Marcy
Affiliation: 1. Pesticide Research Institute, Santa Rosa, CA, USA; 2. California-Minnesota Honey Farms, Oakdale, CA; 3. Cox Honey, Mendon, UT; 4. Old Mill Honey Farm, Barrett, MN; 5. Space Laser Awareness, Santa Rosa, CA, USA
Abstract: Sixty commercial honey bee colonies were monitored over the course of one year to assess potential correlations between measured colony strength and environmental stressors, including exposures to pesticides, pathogens, and Varroa mites. The fractional change in population of the four colonies on each pallet between June 1 and October 1 was evaluated as a function of pesticide load per pallet for each of the 37 pesticide chemicals detected. Pathogen results have already been published and showed no correlation with colony health. We found correlations of statistical significance for the individual neonicotinoid insecticides acetamiprid and imidacloprid, and correlations of greater significance for the individual fungicides boscalid, pyraclostrobin, carbendazim, and fenbuconazole, as well as the herbicide pendimethalin. We performed a similar correlation analysis using logical pesticide groupings by use type or mode of action. We found strong correlations between the fractional change in bee populations and several groups of neonicotinoids, fungicides, and insect growth regulators, with p-values less than 0.01 in a number of cases. The correlations are consistent with a causal relationship between honey bee health and exposure to these chemical combinations.

Title: Endophytic Beauveria bassiana and Bacillus amyloliquefaciens strains as Gossypium hirsutum seed coatings: Evaluation of Bioinsecticidal and biostimulant effect on semifield conditions.
Authors: Vasileios Papantzikos; Spiridon Mantzoukas; Alexandra Koutsompina; Evangelia M. Karali; Panagiotis A. Eliopoulos; Dimitrios Servis; Stergios Bitivanos; George Patakioutas
Affiliation: Department of Agriculture, Arta Campus, University of Ioannina, 45100 Ioannina, Greece; (V.P.); (S.M.); (A.K.); (E.M.K.); (G.P.) Laboratory of Plant Health Management, Department of Agrotechnology, University of Thessaly, Geopolis, 41500 Larissa, Greece; (P.A.E.) BASF Hellas S.A., 15125 Marousi, Greece; (D.S.); (S.B.)
Abstract: There are many challenges in cotton cultivation, mainly linked to management practices and market demands. The textile commerce requirements are increasing while the effects of climate change on cotton cultivation are becoming an issue, as its commercial development depends significantly on the availability of favorable climatic parameters and the absence of insect pests. In this research, it was studied whether the application of two commercial strains as cotton seed coatings could effectively contribute to the previous obstacles. The experiment was carried out in semi-field conditions at the University of Ioannina, in a completely randomized design and lasted for 163 days. The following treatments were tested: I) a commercial strain of Beauveria bassiana and II) its combination with a commercial Bacillus amyloliquefaciens strain. Uncoated cotton seeds were used as a control. The biostimulant potential of the two endophytic seed coatings was assessed by the growth characteristics of cotton like the total length, leaf area, fresh and dry biomass, and total chlorophyll. The bioinsecticidal effect was evaluated by measuring the population of Aphis gossypii on cotton leaves. In addition, during the experiment, an analysis of proline was carried out in the cotton leaves in order to determine whether there was plant stress. From the assessment of the above parameters, it follows that the two seed coatings can enhance the growth performance of cotton. Also, the coatings showed a significant effect in reducing the abundance of A. gossypii. In the face of intense market demands for cotton, our results encourage further research into the combined application of the two strains as a cotton seed coating.

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