Semiochemical experiment data, 2005-2009 - RELU Re-bugging the system: promoting adoption of alternative pest management strategies in field crop systems

The semiochemical experiment data were collected from novel laboratory, semi-field- and field-scale bioassay experiments taking behavioural observations and counts of pest insects and their natural enemies in the field. Crop yields were taken. Chemical analyses were also done using air entrainment. 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. Conservation biological control experiments data investigating the effect of wild field margins on pests and predators, 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).

该半化学实验数据源自创新的实验室、半田间及田间规模的生物试验，包括对田间害虫及其天敌的行为观察和计数，并记录了作物产量。利用空气夹带法进行了化学分析。本研究是英国自然环境研究委员会（NERC）乡村经济与土地利用（RELU）计划的一部分。尽管对食品生产中农药使用的广泛担忧以及对综合害虫管理（IPM）系统中潜在可行的生物害虫控制策略的可用性，英国的谷物作物生产仍然保持着对农药的依赖。本项目旨在进一步探究这种缺乏采纳的原因，以夏季谷类蚜虫的控制作为案例研究。生物控制的缺乏采纳原因是一个复杂的相互作用，涉及技术和经济问题。经济学家指出，行业继续采用次优技术的潜在路径依赖性，这是由过去的采纳动态导致的，从而形成了每种技术的差异化的私人成本结构。此外，农民对新技术的预期效果的风险规避也可能限制了其采纳。这在IPM建立在技术组合之上且对组合和采纳规模的科学理解有限的情况下尤为重要。面对这种情况，农民不会采纳社会优越的IPM技术，因此迫切需要公共政策的干预。这种干预可能采取精心设计的研究计划、政府资金和大规模研究结果的传播或直接支持农场景观和农场系统变化的公共支持，以促进生物控制。该研究探讨了替代杀虫剂在耕作农业中的应用以及生产者在转向这些方法时面临的困难。两种方法被探索：一是通过改变栖息地来鼓励天敌和寄生虫，二是利用自然存在的气味来操纵天敌分布作为模型技术。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效果的影响。目标是改善新产品和技术的研发方式，以帮助打破对化学农药的依赖。此外，该研究项目还调查了野生田边对害虫和捕食者的影响，这些数据可用于保护生物学控制实验。此外，社会经济研究被用于指导自然科学研究，以开发和评估适合规模和互补性的栖息地管理和半化学推拉策略的组合，以提供在谷物作物农业中替代使用杀虫剂的可行、具有商业吸引力和可持续的替代方案。这些社会经济数据可通过英国数据档案在英国数据档案下（研究编号6960）获取（见在线资源）。有关本研究的更多信息和相关文件，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）。