Research / Divisions / Division 4 - Crop Management
Leader: Oscar Ortiz
Principal activities
Seed
Late blight
Virology
IPM
Socioeconomic and participatory research
The Integrated Crop Management Division undertakes research to consolidate solutions to production constraints (e.g. late blight, bacterial wilt, virus soil fertility) in ways that are appropriate to each target population's region, system, and socioeconomic constraints.
Highlights
CIP’s experience with Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and Integrated Disease Management (IDM) in Farmer Field School (FFS) settings over the past seven years, has demonstrated that interactions between crop management components are of great importance to farmers. The Integrated Crop Management (ICM) Division conducts integrated research on how to best manage the factors that influence potato and sweetpotato productivity and competitiveness, namely seed, soil, diseases, and insect pests. Improved management will allow researchers to respond more efficiently to the needs of farmers who depend on these crops as part of their livelihood systems.
Seed team:
- A System for low-cost and cheap production of potato seed (RAPIDSEED) has been developed and partially validated. The system does not require of tissue culturing for production of basic seed stocks, it combines the use of most advanced pathogen testing methodology and a safe protocol for seed multiplication, reducing significantly seed production costs.
Late blight team:
- The measurement of parameters needed for accurate disease simulation and prediction under highlands tropical conditions has been improved. This includes fungicide dose/response, fungicide ‘wash-off’ (after rain) and host/pathogen specific disease interactions. In addition, the LB team published on the Web a user-friendly BL simulation model called POLUX, which was used in training workshops in Africa, Quito and Lima.
- Progress made for the identification of the most effective ways of managing disease caused by infections at or even before the time of plant emergence. Initial studies demonstrated that infection could occur prior to emergence, which complicates disease management.
Virology team:
- A new species of whiteflies, Bemisia afer affecting sweetpotatoes in Peru and cassava in SSA was determined as a vector of sweetpotato chlorotic stunt virus (SPCSV). Up to now only B. tabaci biotype B was the only reported vector of SPCSV, that together with sweetpotato feathery mottle virus (SPFMV) cause SPVD. The spread of a new vector affects the epidemiological behavior of SPCSV, SPVD and synergistic effects among viruses.
- With Division 2, six-year systematic work allowed the discovery of only one accession in the cultivated sweetpotato germplasm collection (about 3,500 accessions) with extreme resistance to SPVD, the most devastating sweetpotato virus disease in the world.
IPM team:
- Improvement of the understanding the weevil migration and infestation patterns is allowing the development of IPM strategies for resource-poor farmers in the Andes. Results revealed that especially the intensification of the potato production increased the weevil up to 8 times more damaging weevil larvae per potato plant in monocropping than farmers who practice rotation. The indigenous system of community rotations that is nowadays rarely practiced was therefore well adapted to reduce the weevil population.
- The targeted use of biological control especially of entomopatogenic nematodes (Heterorhabditis spp.) has showed high control potential of Andean potato weevil (APW) larvae and could be used to control APW in border application where the insects concentrate.
Socioeconomic and participatory research team:
In collaboration with a team of the Humboldt University of Germany, a Participatory Approach to Poverty Assessment (PAPA) was developed and proved to be an efficient instrument to have a better understanding of the perception of poverty by potato growers, the pathways to move out of poverty and the relation with different factors related to potato cultivation in Andean communities.