Online platform with access to over 50 years of arable pest and disease pressures launched
Following a three-year project funded by Defra, ADAS has launched an interactive online platform allowing public access to over 50 years of arable crop pest and disease data from across England and Wales.
The new platform, developed using data collected as part of the annual Defra Survey of Crop Pests and Diseases, is open to growers, agronomists, researchers and the public.
Every year since 1970, researcher’s collet approximately 300 samples of winter wheat and 90 samples of winter oilseed rape from randomly selected fields across England and Wales. The samples are then assessed for signs of pest and disease infestation. With the launch, stakeholders and the public now have open access to this extensive database and can use it to identify trends and map nationwide crop pressures over the last half-century. All data displayed on the platform is completely anonymised and amalgamated on a 10km2 basis.
Defra and ADAS hope that by opening up access to this data, it will lead to:
- improvements in pest and disease risk forecasting
- inform crop breeding priorities
- assist with understanding the impact of pesticide legislation and climate change.
Individual farmers could use it to explore trends across seasons or explore for themselves the impact of IPM choices such as variety choice, sowing date decisions, or different agronomy practices.
This year’s data will be added to the database once all the winter wheat and winter oilseed rape crop samples have been collected and analysed.
Julie summarised:
“This fantastic resource would not have been possible without the thousands of farmers who have taken part in the Defra survey over the last 50 years. Their contributions and continued support have meant everyone now can look back, see the bigger picture of crop pest and disease emergence, and find new ways to build our national resilience to crop disease and pest threats. We also fully acknowledge Fera’s contribution in the coordination of surveys over the past years.”
Access the survey through the Pest and Disease Survey website.