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Plant endophytes are symbiotic, and often beneficial, microbes living inside plants that can boost growth, enhance stress tolerance, and help protect against pests and diseases. By harnessing these natural allies, we can reduce reliance on pesticides while improving crop resilience and productivity.
Plant microbiome-based approaches aim to enhance plant immunity and resilience by leveraging beneficial microbes and managing the microbial community through both direct applications and indirect agricultural practices. Advances in sequencing technologies now enable targeted, sustainable disease management strategies that complement traditional crop protection within integrated pest management (IPM) frameworks.
Biostimulants have the potential to enhance both plant growth and defence mechanisms. Elicitors, a specific category of biostimulants, can activate plant defence responses by simulating the presence of biotic stressors. The use of natural products such as biostimulants and elicitors can reduce reliance on chemical pesticides, promote crop resilience and health, and contribute to more sustainable agricultural practices.
The invasive spotted wing drosophila (SWD) is an emerging pest of fruit crops in Scotland and efforts to develop IPM strategies that control numbers and limit damage are focussing on understanding the population genetics, habitat and landscape features and varietal susceptibility.
IPM research has brought together and tested late blight managment components including host resistance, disease forcasting, spore detection, inoculum sources and fungicide programmes.
IPM research has brought together and tested late blight management components including host resistance, disease forecasting, spore detection, inoculum sources and fungicide programmes.
Potato cyst nematodes are major pests of potato in the UK causing significant economic losses. Their occurrence in Scotland is increasing, particularly the pale potato cyst nematode (wPCN) Globodera pallida, and with further spread there is an increased risk of loss of seed land.
Culturing collected insect material allows the preservation of live reference collections and provides insect material for research.
Soil-borne pathogens of potato cause a number of serious blemish diseases. By employing appropriate soil sampling strategies in conjunction with a method for soil DNA extraction and real-time PCR assays to detect and quantify target pathogens, we can validate the relationship between soil-borne inoculum and disease risk. The relationship between pathogen detection and disease risk for black dot (Lees et al. 2010 and Brierley et al. 2015) and powdery scab (Brierley et al. 2012) have been determined. Furthermore, the impact of soil-borne inoculum on disease has been investigated in conjunction with other control factors such as host resistance and crop management, for example, crop duration and chemical control (Brierley et al. 2018).
Mixtures of several current recommended varieties of barley, particularly winter types, can be used to partially control many pathogens, particularly splash-dispersed pathogens such as R. commune (causing rhynchosporium or scald), as a control measure in their own right. However, in simple mixtures of two or three components, especially in spring barley, they are insufficiently effective and are best used in conjunction with other measures.
