Public Funding for Russell Ipm Ltd

Fruit-growing generates over £1 billion for the UK economy annually with apples and pears contributing over £250 million. Forest bug, _Pentatoma rufipes_, is an emerging pest in orchards, probably driven by the withdrawal of pesticides, and the effects of climate change. It causes fruit deformity and pitting which can result in up to 40% losses in productivity and waste due to unsaleable fruit. The pest is currently monitored by laborious scouting for the pest in orchard trees. This project will aim to identify and synthesise species-specific pheromones for forest bug that will provide innovative approaches for monitoring and controlling this pest. The synthetic pheromones will be used to attract the pest into traps, enabling growers and agronomists to easily estimate numbers in orchards and predict fruit damage and yield losses. In addition, the development of synthetic pheromones will make it possible to develop non-pesticidal control options in the future, including mass trapping and mating disruption. These approaches will help reduce the need for conventional, chemical insecticides that disrupt integrated pest management programmes and potentially harm the environment. The project will help growers transition towards net zero emissions by avoiding unnecessary application of insecticides and reducing emissions involved in harvesting and storing unmarketable fruit. The project is led by Agrovista UK Ltd which is a leading supplier of agronomy advice, seed, crop protection products and precision farming services, working in partnership with horticultural growers. Other commercial partners are Avalon Fresh Ltd, an agronomic and technical advice provider across the fruit value chain and Russell IPM, a UK specialist producer of innovative products for pest and disease management. They will collaborate with scientists from NIAB and NRI who have internationally recognised expertise in identification, synthesis and application of pheromones for monitoring and control of insect pests. English apple and pear growers will be key to the project, providing sites to study the pest, collect insect material and evaluate new products. Because of the importance of the orchard industry to the UK economy, the outputs of this project will be particularly applicable here. However, forest bug is a pest in other European countries, so the results will have much wider impact with the potential for developing new skills and products outside the region.

The global soft fruit industry suffers up to 80% crop losses from an invasive fruit fly, spotted wing drosophila (SWD). Growers rely on chemical insecticides to protect fruit from SWD, costing £11bn. We have identified a SWD pathogenic fungus and a bait which SWD feeds on. In this project we will test these two approaches in combination, to develop a more targeted and less environmentally damaging approach to SWD control. This strategy will be a first for this global pest and enable fruit growers to reduce insecticide inputs and residues, offering a potentially game-changing solution to SWD.

To develop low-cost digital solutions for the monitoring of pests using smart pheromone-based trap sensors and their innovative IoT connectivity.

"The UK fruit industry is under continual pressure from introduction of non-native pests and diseases. Spotted wing drosophila (SWD), _Drosophila suzukii_, was first detected in the UK in 2013 and populations have increased year-on-year since then. The pest lays eggs in fruit before ripening and the larvae destroy the fruit from the inside, so the damage is only detectable after harvest. Fruits attacked in the UK include raspberry, strawberry, blueberry, blackberry, cherry and grapes and 25-100% of strawberry and cherry crops were lost during 2016\. The value of UK horticulture production is £400 m pa, and an estimated £20-30 m pa is currently spent on controlling the pest. Equivalent losses and costs are experienced in the US and other European countries where SWD has established. Best practice approaches include rigorous removal and destruction of waste fruit and use of insect mesh barriers. These are costly and growers still revert to routine pesticide applications to prevent economic damage. This strategy is not sustainable. Consumers increasingly demand produce free of insecticide residues and it is vital to prevent emergence of insecticide resistance in the pest. Furthermore, the need to use chemical insecticides against SWD is compromising the impressive programmes of integrated pest management that growers have developed against other pests and diseases. This research project will provide the basis for development of new products for control of SWD in a sustainable manner, compatible with integrated pest management. The product will use novel lures to attract the flies to a device which infects them with a new strain of fungus which is highly pathogenic to the flies but not to other organisms. The infected flies are released and the fungus can be passed on to other flies before killing the infected individuals, thus greatly enhancing the impact of the initial infection in a way not possible with other products. The commercial partners are the leading UK producer of biorational pest control agents and the UK's foremost berry and stone fruit production and marketing group. The academic partners are two research institutes with long experience in research on insect attractants and management of SWD. This will ensure timely delivery of research outputs which are suitable for commercial production and acceptable to growers. The research will provide the basis for development of at least three new products with worldwide market potential and their use will increase productivity and profitability of the UK horticulture industry."

The accurate monitoring of pests is vital to profitable crop and livestock production and to human health and optimises pest management through improved interventions. This project will develop a full SmartTraps system for remote autonomous monitoring of Spotted Wing Drosophila (SWD), an invasive soft and stone fruit pest that has increased the cost of production of soft and stone fruit by 10% in most production regions globally including in the UK. The SmartTraps system will rapidly and accurately identify the near microscopic SWD males and females amongst a myriad of non-target species attracted by a broad-spectrum lure, by machine learning image analysis in compact, autonomous, non-saturating (node) traps. The catch data from networks of individual (node) traps will be transmitted via gateway stations to the cloud, with real time cloud-based data integration accessible on the web and a variety of mobile platforms as an aid to scheduling management treatments for the pest. The feasibility of two of the key core processes in this system, automatically capturing images and identifying them, was demonstrated in Innovate UK project 131787 (completed 30 June 2016), an important technological development and advancement in science. The SmartTraps system will be a significant advancement in pest specific monitoring technology with wide application for numerous pests globally, establishing the UK at the leading edge of this new ground breaking technology with huge international market potential with diverse applications in agriculture, health and the environment.

To develop the iPEST smart-trap with embedded remote pest-recognition system for pheromone based insect monitoring traps, enabling rapid response decision to farmers facing invasive and resident pests.

General semiochemical repellents are widely used for protecting humans and livestock from attacks by arthropod pests in developing and developed countries, but they have been little explored or used for crop protection. The aim of this project is to prove the concept that volatile, repellent chemicals can be used to reduce the damage caused to agricultural crops by a range of insect pests. This could provide a widely-applicable new approach to management of crop pests that reduces the use of conventional pesticides and is compatible with integrated pest management and sustainable agricultural intensification. The approach is applicable in both developed and developing countries. The project will be a collaboration between a UK SME, Russell IPM, two UK research institutes, East Malling Research and the Natural Resources Institute, and an SME, Russell IPM Bangladesh and Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI) in Bangladesh

Damage caused by fruit flies is a huge problem, both in the developed and developing world. The insects lay eggs in soft fruit and vegetables which means the food rots and cannot be harvested. Fruit flies cannot be controlled effectively by insecticides because farmers in developing countries cannot afford to buy them and in addition, the fruit flies have become resistant so that the chemicals do not work. An increase in the productivity of soft fruit and vegetables is a vital part of the development of these countries as it will allow farmers to grow and harvest more produce for their own use and to sell to the lucrative overseas markets. Russell IPM has developed a highly effective and safe biological system for controlling fruit flies which utilises food and sexual attractants to lure the insects into traps. This project will test and promote this technology in Africa and Asia.

This project will investigate the feasibility of developing an autonomous SmartTraps system for remotely monitoring adult Spotted Wing Drosophila (SWD), an invasive fruit pest. The feasibility of rapidly and accurately identifying the near microscopic Spotted Wing Drosophila males and females by image analysis in a compact, autonomous, non-saturating trap will be determined as the key preliminary step and technological challenge. Other key processes that will need to be developed for a full system beyond a successful outcome of this feasibility study include between trap communication, cloud based data aggregation and analysis, and web and app-based tools to integrate summary data from traps in order to provide decision support for growers. The trap will allow much closer and more reliable monitoring of SWD, and will be a significant advancement in pest specific monitoring technology which will have wide application for numerous pests globally.

to improve traps for the control of thrips and whiteflies in greenhouse crops.

A bioactive predator refuge will be developed for use in apple and pear orchards. It will stabilise and enhance populations of natural predators, especially earwigs, which regulate key pests so that pesticide sprays are needed less frequently. Waste and extensive losses in yield and quality both pre- and post-harvest and during processing due to pear sucker, codling moth and aphids, the most damaging pests of apple and pear crops, will be reduced. Earwigs are voracious predators with a high prey consumption rate. Populations vary greatly between orchards and in many orchards they are absent because of inadequate food and shelter. The device will provide these resources at critical times. The earwig's aggregation pheromone will be identified and provided to ensure rapid and sustained occupancy. Encouraging these important natural enemies will help protect the environment.