Conservation biological control experiments data, 2005-2009 - RELU Re-bugging the system: promoting adoption of alternative pest management strategies in field crop

This set of conservation biological control experiments data was collected as part of five field experiments investigating agricultural biological control techniques, particularly the effect of wild field margins on pests and predators. The study is part of the NERC Rural Economy and Land Use (RELU) programme. Despite the widespread concerns regarding the use of pesticides in food production and the availability of potentially viable biological pest control strategies in Integrated Pest Management (IPM) systems, the UK cereal crop production remains a bastion of pesticide use. This project aimed to understand further the reasons for this lack of adoption, using the control of summer cereal aphids as a case study. Reasons for this lack of adoption of biocontrol remain a complex interplay of both technical and economic problems. Economists highlight the potential path dependency of an industry to continue to employ a suboptimal technology, caused by past dynamics of adoption resulting in differential private cost structures of each technique. Further, risk aversion on the part of farmers regarding the perceived efficacy of a new technology may also limit up-take. This may be particularly important when IPM rests on portfolios of technologies and when little scientific understanding exists on the effect of portfolio and scale of adoption on overall efficacy. Faced with this, farmers will not adopt a socially superior IPM technology and there exists a clear need for public policy action. This action may take the form of minimising uncertainty through carefully designed research programs, government funding and dissemination of the results of large-scale research studies or direct public support for farm landscape and farm system changes that can promote biocontrol. This research looked at alternatives to the use of insecticides in arable agriculture and the difficulties facing producers in switching over to them. Two approaches were explored: habitat manipulations, to encourage predators and parasites, and using naturally occurring odours to manipulate predator distribution as model technologies. Scale and portfolio effects on biocontrol efficacy have been investigated in controlled and field scale experiments. Aim is to improve the way research and development of new products and techniques are carried out to help break the dependence on chemical pesticides. 'Semiochemical experiment data, 2005-2009 - RELU Re-bugging the system: promoting adoption of alternative pest management strategies in field crop systems' from this same research project are also available. In addition, socio-economic research has been used to help direct natural science research into the development and evaluation of a combination of habitat management and semiochemical push-pull strategies of appropriate scale and complementarity to yield viable, commercially attractive and sustainable alternatives to the use of insecticides in cereal crop agriculture. These socio-economic data are available through the UK Data Archive under study number 6960 (see online resources). Further information and documentation for this study may be found through the RELU Knowledge Portal and the project's ESRC funding award web page (see online resources).

本数据集收录了作为五项田间实验一部分的 conservation biological control experiments 数据，这些实验旨在探究农业生物控制技术，特别是野生田缘对害虫和捕食者的影响。该研究隶属于英国国家环境研究委员会（NERC）的乡村经济与土地利用（RELU）项目。尽管人们对食品生产中农药的使用普遍表示担忧，且在综合害虫管理（IPM）系统中存在可操作的生物害虫控制策略，但英国谷物作物生产仍然依赖于农药的使用。本项目旨在进一步探究这种缺乏采纳的原因，以夏季禾谷蚜虫的控制作为案例研究。生物控制的采纳不足，其原因是技术与经济问题之间的复杂交互作用。经济学家强调，一个行业可能会因为过去的采纳动态导致的每种技术的私人成本结构差异，而持续采用次优技术，这具有潜在的路径依赖性。此外，农民对新技术的预期功效的规避风险态度也可能限制其采纳。当IPM依赖于技术组合，且对组合采纳的规模及其对总体功效的影响的科学理解有限时，这一点尤为重要。面对这一挑战，农民不会采纳社会优势的IPM技术，因此迫切需要公共政策的干预。这种干预可能通过精心设计的研发计划、政府资金以及大规模研究结果的传播，或直接支持能够促进生物控制的农田景观和农业系统变化的公共支持来实现。本研究探讨了替代杀虫剂在耕作农业中的使用，以及生产者在转向这些替代品时面临的困难。两种方法被探索： habitat manipulations（栖息地操纵），以鼓励捕食者和寄生虫，以及利用自然存在的气味来操纵捕食者分布作为模型技术。在控制和田间规模实验中，已研究了规模和组合对生物控制功效的影响。目标是改进新产品和技术的研发方式，以帮助打破对化学农药的依赖。'Semiochemical experiment data, 2005-2009 - RELU Re-bugging the system: promoting adoption of alternative pest management strategies in field crop systems' 同一研究项目中的数据也可供使用。此外，社会经济学研究已被用于指导自然科学研究，以开发和发展适宜规模和互补性的栖息地管理以及 semiochemical push-pull strategies（半化学推动-拉策略），以提供可行、具有商业吸引力和可持续性的替代方案，用于谷物作物农业中杀虫剂的使用。这些社会经济数据可通过英国数据档案馆（UK Data Archive）在研究编号6960下获取（见在线资源）。关于本研究的相关信息和文档可通过 RELU 知识门户和项目 ESRC 资助奖项网页获取（见在线资源）。