The Pest Management Centre has selected its new integrated pest management (IPM) project based on a merit analysis of six proposed candidates. The winning project was submitted by Ontario and Saskatchewan to look at root maggots that affect Brassica vegetables.

This year marked the first time that the PMC introduced an additional priority selection opportunity inviting stakeholders to include pest issues in need of a systems-based, integrated management solution approach as part of the national lists and nominate IPM proposals to address these. The new IPM A project marks the 30th priority selected for support by PMC in 2021. 

The merit of the proposed candidates was assessed by using seven pre-set criteria, including: (i) available tools suitable for IPM; (ii) scientific capacity within Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada to lead development; (iii) economic margins to implement a potential IPM toolkit; (iv) relevance of crop and pest; (v) feasibility and cost of trials; and (vi) likelihood of success for the project.

As a result of the merit analysis and after consulting a panel of provincial minor use coordinators, the result is as follows:  

The IPM project will be implemented as a pilot in 2022 and will be jointly coordinated by the PMC’s Pesticide Risk Reduction and the Minor Use Pesticide teams.

Source:  Pest Management Centre May 20, 2021 news release