Faculty and Staff:
Pedro Barbosa, Amy E. Brown, Galen P. Dively, Sandra Sardanelli
Description of Focus Area:
Despite the use of pesticides and other crop protection technologies,
pests–insects,
disease agents, weeds, rodents, and other harmful organisms–annually
rob an enormous portion of the world’s potential crop yield. Nowhere
are pest ravages more apparent than in the tropics of developing countries.
Pesticide threats to humans and the environment are also most apparent in
these countries, and the problem is exacerbated by the imports of pesticides
restricted or prohibited in their countries of origin. Few developing countries
have the capability to regulate pesticides or train farmers on their proper
use.
Integrated pest management, now being promoted widely in developed countries,
was first used on large scale in tropical regions of Latin America for reducing
pesticides and restoring biological control in high value crops. The
world’s
largest IPM efforts–in terms of participating farmers–are currently
in tropical Asia, and major organized IPM efforts are also underway in Africa
and Latin America. The organizers are emphasizing new pedagogic methods for
spreading IPM and pesticide management techniques to the large farm population
of developing countries. The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI)
and the other International Agricultural Research Centers have major programs
to promote plant resistance, biological control, and other methods in IPM
systems of tropical crops. Some developing countries are introducing crops
that have been genetically engineered with pest-resistance traits. IRRI and
other research organizations are experimenting with strategies suited for
developing countries that slow the rate at which pests adapt to the transgenic
crops.
The faculty has collaborative research on different aspects of crop protection
with institutions or individuals in several countries. Examples of recent
large formal projects and the foreign cooperators include: 1) development
of improved forms of entomopathogenic fungi for controlling insect pests
of coffee (National Coffee Research Centre–CENICAFE–in Colombia);
2) development of improved systems for managing insect pests of tomatoes
(Egyptian Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reformation); 3) identification
and manipulation of heritable plant traits that affect the abundance of natural
enemies of crop insect pests (Egyptian Ministry of Agriculture and Land
Reformation);
and 4) development of improved pest management systems on grapes, cotton,
and faba beans in middle Egypt (USAID University Linkage Project). In addition,
individual faculty are collaborating with counterparts in foreign institutions
on research related to different aspects of pest ecology and management.
The research faculty is interested in pursuing cooperation with foreign
institutions
that enables our graduate students and post doc fellows to participate in
the collaborative research efforts.
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