Landmark Phytosanitary meeting CPM-12 kicks off in Incheon, Republic of Korea
The 12th Session of the Commission on Phytosanitary Measures opened today in Incheon, Republic of Korea. This is significant as it is the first time that the event is being hosted outside of Rome by a member country of the International Plant Protection Convention. This year’s theme is “Plant Health and Trade Facilitation”, so this topic…
The perfect storm – how drought is hitting crops hard
Last year, one of the strongest El Niño events ever recorded caused significant changes to weather patterns around the world. Southern and Eastern Africa were hit particularly hard and suffered some of the worst drought conditions for decades, with as little as a quarter of the expected rainfall in the last few months of the…
Can farms maintain productivity while reducing pesticide use?
A new UN report states that it is dangerously misleading to suggest that pesticides are necessary to achieve food security. Instead, the report recommends that farms reduce pesticide use and adopt sustainable practices that protect crops from pests by enhancing biodiversity and natural enemies. This agroecological approach eliminates reliance on, and exposure to, expensive and toxic…
A greater role for educational animation in extension?
Blog contributed by Nick Quist Nathaniels, Independent Consultant, Denmark Computer animations are a rather special and exciting communication medium. For example, they can be used to illustrate the basic biology of pests and diseases and explain control measures. Animations are also an effective way to show changes that occur over a long time or at the…
Making the most of the knowledge bank: super searching
In the first post in this series about making the most of the Plantwise knowledge bank , we wrote about how to effectively search for content. I’m now here to tell you that we’d barely scratched the surface of smart searching! In this post we will delve further into effective searching, covering Boolean searches, word…
Update: New Pest & Disease Records (07 Sep 16)
We’ve selected a few of the latest new geographic, host and species records for plant pests and diseases from CAB Abstracts. Records this fortnight include a new insect pest, Cyrtozemia dispar, on peanut in India, the presence of the entomopathogenic fungus Pandora neoaphidis in Argentina and the first record of Tuta absoluta in Tanzania.
Making the most of the knowledge bank: which pests are in your country?
This is the fourth instalment in our series on the Plantwise knowledge bank in which we hope to demystify some of the key aspects of the knowledge bank. This week we’re focusing on pest and disease distribution. When accessing the knowledge bank for the first time, it is advisable to select the country or region…
Making the most of the knowledge bank: top tools and information
Welcome to the third in our series on making the most of the knowledge bank. This time we turn our attention to a section of the knowledge bank which contains a huge amount of valuable information but that is all too often overlooked – the Links to useful information and tools. This is which is where you’ll…
Making the most of the knowledge bank: begin booklet building!
In the latest on our series on making the most of the Plantwise knowledge bank, we turn our focus to the Booklet Builder which lets you compile a custom set of Plantwise factsheets and Pest Management Decision Guides (PMDGs) into one booklet, or create a booklet of content written in your country at the click of a…
Making the most of the knowledge bank: 5 tips for smart searching
In the first of our series of blogs on ‘Making the most of the knowledge bank’, we dive straight in to the deep end with the site search! The search bar, found in the top right of all pages, allows you to search all content on the knowledge bank and browse the information in one easy…