“It’s pest management the right way,” said Heather Kelly, plant pathologist at the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture, “With integrated pest management, we are managing pests with more than one tool, only when you need to and as sustainably as possible.”
Kelly is the lead investigator for a new $225,000 grant from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. She and nine other specialists from UTIA will spend the next three years researching integrated pest management, or IPM, and showing community members and producers how to effectively control pests.
More than half (58 percent) of the $225,000 grant will be used for implementation in agronomic crops, with 18 percent to be split evenly for implementation in specialty crops and pollinator health. The remaining 24 percent of the grant will be used to educate pesticide applicators and community stakeholders, such as school and housing administrators on IPM.
Some of the programs include the following:
- Developing online resources
- Training agricultural county agents, farmers, consultants, beekeepers and other stakeholders
- Monitoring and managing invasive and pesticide-resistant pests
- Demonstrating management strategies and their effects on crop sustainability
- Educating private and commercial pesticide applicators
- Training IPM decision makers in public or low-income housing facilities and in schools
“Our long term goal is to continue to provide real life solutions, specifically to provide programs that enable people to make effective, economically sustainable and environmentally sound decisions based in IPM,” Kelly said.
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