About:
The next KE Hub online Triage Workshop will be presented by Barworth Agriculture.
Soil sampling at a field scale for crop pests
Potato cyst nematode (PCN) is an endemic pest found in potato growing regions around the world. Crucial agronomic management decisions are made pertaining to the establishment of a potato crop based on the results of a field survey for the pest. For each sample, current practice is to amalgamate around 40 soil cores collected in either a regular grid pattern or at randomised GPS points generated by a computer algorithm. The current recommended area for each composite sample is one hectare. Soil samples can be as small as 100g, and as PCN are very small (<1mm), they can easily be missed using industry standard sampling methods.
Our challenge is to improve soil sampling strategy such that more PCN is detected. One factor that could be considered is decreasing the sampling area (for example, from one hectare to a quarter hectare), but in practice, this option is not attractive to field owners since the cost for taking and processing a sample remains the same, independent of the area size. Ideally, we would like to understand the likelihood of retrieving the target organism when the diameter or number of cores taken per area is varied. Much work has been done on attempting to model the ‘typical’ field distribution of PCN, but unfortunately there is a wide range of environmental and biological factors that undermine any model based on real field distribution data. Instead, a matrix that compares the likelihood of detecting PCN based on theoretical population distributions would be helpful.
Academic mathematical scientists from KE Hub partner university departments are invited to take part in these workshops. If you would like to attend, please contact your local KE Champion to receive the meeting link or get in touch with the organisers, Lauren Hyndman and Diwei Zhou.
KE Hub Triage Workshops are informal discussion sessions where one B.I.G. Partner presents a challenge they are currently facing, with the aim of determining:
- What, if any, mathematical sciences approaches can be used to address the challenge?
- Who from the mathematical sciences community would like to take on the challenge?
- What mechanisms are most appropriate for driving the challenge forward?
The purpose of these workshops is to allow the B.I.G. Partner to engage directly with academic mathematical scientists to probe the scientific content of their proposed challenge. The environment is relaxed and interactive, and we encourage questions, clarifications and discussions throughout. You can find information on all upcoming and past workshops here.