Context and goal
Using a warning system to alert growers to the risk of disease developing in their crops is one of the cornerstones of integrated pest management. These warnings enable preventive action to be taken and limit the number of treatments required, in both organic and conventional production, while maintaining correct yields and the quality of produce required for marketing.
In vegetable growing, the decision-support tools (DST) currently available to growers are few, poorly documented, and expensive. The RELOAD project aims to develop and make available to vegetable growers DSTs for the main fungal diseases of carrot, onion, cabbage and asparagus. These DSTs will be accessible via the Agromet.be platform, on which several DSTs for field crops are already available in open access.
Partnership
The RELOAD project is based on an operational group bringing together the following players: Centre Interprofessionnel Maraîcher (CIM asbl), Centre wallon de Recherches agronomiques (U3 et U6), CPL-Végémar, and height vegetable producers from all over Wallonia.
Scheduled activities
The first stage of the work will involve gathering existing knowledge about the impact of weather conditions on fungal diseases in the target crops. The idea is to cross-reference the knowledge of growers and experts with the scientific literature.
The second stage involves three years of disease observation campaigns at growers' fields. The diseases will be recorded quantitatively, in terms of incidence or severity, according to a rigorous protocol involving repeated plots and weekly crop monitoring.
The third stage will be to build up high-quality local weather data sets. Automated weather stations will be installed in the fields of the farmers being monitored, and the data will be subjected to automatic and human quality control.
The fourth stage will be the construction of weather and disease risk models, based on pre-existing models, collected knowledge and field observations. The models will be integrated into decision-making tools that will generate local results for each plot and, in the fifth stage, will be implemented on the Agromet.be platform with an adapted graphic interface.
The sixth stage will consist of validating the DSTs. This will be done in two ways: i) by quantitative analysis based on the data collected, by comparing the observed increases in disease intensity with the risk periods calculated by the models, and ii) by qualitative or quantitative feedback from end users.
Finally, the seventh stage involves communicating and disseminating the results. This includes knowledge-sharing exchanges within the operational group, information events on the project, warnings issued by the pilot centres (CIM and CPL-Végémar) incorporating the risks identified by field observations or models, and free access to validated and documented tools on the Agromet.be platform.
Summary of expected results
- Setting up a network of quantitative observations of the main fungal diseases at growers' premises. With connected weather stations.
- 4 decision-support tools (onion, carrot, cabbage, asparagus) calculating the weather risks of infection, available online at Agromet.be.
Funding
Walloon Region, FEADER fund and CRA-W
Team
