Sampling and Monitoring in Crop Protection: The Theoretical Basis for Designing Practical Decision Guides

Sampling and Monitoring in Crop Protection: The Theoretical Basis for Designing Practical Decision Guides

by M R Binns, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Ottawa, Canada; J P Nyrop, Department of Entomology, Cornell University, USA; W van der Werf, Sub-department of Theoretical Production Ecology, Wageningen Agricultural University, Netherlands

Pub Date: April 2000
Hardback
304 pages

Readership
Graduate or final year undergraduate students and professionals in pest management/crop protection.

Main Description
This book covers the statistical concepts of sampling in agricultural pest management. These can be summarised as how to obtain sample data from the field and how to use the data in decision-making. Options may include introducing natural enemies, spraying with pesticide, or adopting a wait-and-see approach. Some prior knowledge of pests and how they interact with crops is required of the reader, but only minimal mathematical background is assumed. Worked examples using the mathematical software program Mathcad are also included.

Reviews
• "It is a pleasure to recommend this book. Those of a non-mathematical background will find that the text deals with the quantitative issue in a gentle, sympathetic fashion."
J N Perry, Crop Protection, 20, 2001

Main Contents
• Basic concepts of decision-making in pest management
• Basic concepts of sampling for pest management
• Classifying pest density
• Distributions
• Sequential sampling for classification
• Enhancing and evaluating the usefulness of sampling plans
• Binomial counts
• Multiple sources of variation
• Resampling to evaluate the properties of sampling plans
• Sampling over time to classify or estimate a population growth curve
• Monitoring pest populations through time