Dr Sarina Macfadyen1, Dr Maarten Van Helden2, Dr Zorica Duric3, Dr Joanne Holloway3, Dr Wei Xu, Dr Hazel Parry

1CSIRO, Canberra, Australia, 2SARDI, Clare, South Australia, Australia, 3NSW Department of Primary Industries, New South Wales, Australia

Biography:

Dr Macfadyen has conducted entomological research for many years to help develop management options for farmers that improve the sustainability and profitability of their farms. She has worked in a diversity of contexts, organic farms in the UK, grain production landscapes in southern Australia, and smallholder farmer cassava landscapes in East Africa. She currently leads the Agroecology team at CSIRO focussed on alternative approaches to managing pests at the landscape scale.

Abstract:

Current management strategies for arthropod pests in canola rely heavily on the prophylactic use of pesticides. This single-technology approach negatively impacts biodiversity and increases the risk of resistance development in pests. An active community of beneficial arthropod species exists in canola systems, such as generalist predators and parasitic wasps. However, their management by growers and agronomists to assist in reducing pest risk is not commonplace. A new GRDC-funded project, Canola Allies, commenced in 2023 to develop more predictive, active, and integrated solutions for the management of beneficials in canola landscapes. The project team has spent some time thinking about the enabling tools and practices needed to support a transition toward greater use of beneficials. We developed a framework to describe how different institutions in our innovation system need to collaborate to see change of practice on farms and identified opportunities through sustainability credentialing schemes where additional benefits might occur. In this presentation, I will summarize the research components of the project and illustrate the future tools needed to manipulate beneficial species and communities in broad-acre landscapes. The scientific knowledge underpinning these tools is not as well resolved for every species as we would like, however, there are generic rules we can incorporate now.