Harnessing the potential of precision pest management in plantation forests

Abstract

There are numerous new and emerging technologies that allow for greater precision in forest pest management, from sequencing and chemical analyses to data collection through smart technologies, and integration, analysis and sharing of data across fields. These technologies allow for the development of much more accurate tools for pest management than has ever before been possible, and have led to us developing an approach that we define as Precision Pest Management (PPM). The approach also allows for more rapid development of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) tools, as well as the ability for early recognition and response to changes in pest population densities and distributions. We argue that there is an increasing need for a PPM approach, and that we should harness the opportunities these technologies offer to deal with the expected scale and complexity of pest management in the future.