Erich Jörg1, Andrzej Wójtowicz2, Manfred Roehrig3, Benno Kleinhenz1
1 ZEPP – Central Institution for Decision Support Systems in Crop Protection, Germany 2 Instytut Ochrony Roślin w Poznaniu
3 ISIP – Information System Integrated Plant Production, Germany
Development and application of Internet-based
Decision Support System for Plant Protection
in Germany and its use for control of Sclerotinia
sclerotiorum (Lib.) de Bary in oilseed rape
Opracowanie internetowego Systemu Wspomagającego Podejmowanie
Decyzji w Ochronie Roślin w Niemczech oraz jego zastosowanie
do zwalczania Sclerotinia sclerotiorum (Lib.) de Bary
w uprawie rzepaku ozimego
Key words: System for Integrated Crop Protection, Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, oilseed rapeInformation System for Integrated Plant Production ISIP was provided to agricultural practice in Germany in 2004. ISIP focuses on problem-specific decision support modules for cereals, potatoes, sugar beet and oilseed rape. The system delivers the following information: results of simulation /forecasting models for pests and diseases, results of intensive pest monitoring and comments and advice given by regional advisory officers. In addition the ISIP-system contains a comprehensive document database on standard crop protection recommendations and background information on pests and diseases as well as on tillage systems, cultivar choice and further agronomical topics. Słowa kluczowe: System dla Integrowanej Ochrony Roślin, Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, rzepak ozimy
Informacyjny System dla Integrowanej Ochrony Roślin — ISIP — wprowadzono do praktyki rolniczej w Niemczech w 2004 r. Inicjatorem tego przedsięwzięcia była niemiecka Państwowa Służba Ochrony Roślin, która wraz Niemiecką Fundacją Środowiska pokryła koszty opracowania tego systemu. ISIP zawiera moduły dotyczące zbóż, ziemniaka, buraka cukrowego i rzepaku ozimego. Stan fitosanitarny wymienionych upraw jest w ciągu sezonu wegetacyjnego systematycznie oceniany na podstawie rezultatów lustracji polowych oraz wyników modeli prognozujących rozwój chorób i szkodników. Przykładem modelu prognozującego rozwój choroby roślin jest ScleroPro, który znajduje zastosowanie przy wyznaczaniu optymalnych terminów zwalczania na poszczególnych plantacjach rzepaku grzyba Sclerotinia sclerotiorum sprawcy zgnilizny twardzikowej. ScleroPro określa potrzebę podjęcia chemicznej ochrony rzepaku na podstawie liczby godzin, w których warunki meteorologiczne sprzyjają infekcji roślin przez Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, uwzględniając temperaturę, wilgotność względną powietrza oraz opady. Rezultaty obliczeń modelu ScleroPro prezentowane w formie kolorowych piktogramów nie sprawiają użytkownikom systemu kłopotu przy interpretacji wyników. Dodatkowo system ISIP zawiera rozbudowaną bazę danych na temat standar-dowych metod ochrony roślin, uprawy roli, zasad doboru odmian oraz podstawowe informacje o cho-robach i szkodnikach roślin.
ISIP cieszy się dużym zainteresowaniem użytkowników. Subskrypcję na korzystanie z systemu podpisało w 2005 r. ponad 12 000 osób, a średnia miesięczna liczba wejść na stronę ISIP wynosi 190 000. W najbliższej przyszłości planuje się powiększenie zakresu roślin wchodzących w skład systemu. Koszty utrzymania systemu ISIP pokrywane są przez Niemiecką Służbę Ochrony Roślin z 16 krajów związkowych i wynoszą około 480 000 euro rocznie.
Introduction
Farmers manage highly complex production systems and thus are not able to collect and process all relevant information needed for optimisation of their way of production. Therefore extension services play a crucial role in German agricultural production. In Germany farmers mainly rely on information provided by the governmental crop protection services (GCPS) of the countries (Bundesländer). GCPS provide the farmers with neutral, objective and juridically correct information on the necessity of pesticide use or choice of the most appropriate plant protection products. GCPS advice meets both aims, economical optimisation of farmers’ income and minimisation of hazardous effects of agricultural land use.
Public budgets of the German countries are under strong pressure in order to save expenses. Costs for personal staff have been reduced wherever possible. This has also affected GCPS staff. During the last decade the number of personal staff of the GCPS has been reduced by about one third and reductions will be continued during the next years. On the other hand it is the aim of the countries’ governments to supply farmers with extension information. GCPS were forced to find a solution for compensating for the loss in extension staff and still maintain high quality and sufficient quantity of advice. Allocation, processing and dissemination of information have to be optimised. Progress in information technology has been exploited widely to achieve this.
DSS and Internet Use
From 1993 to 1997 in Germany a comprehensive project was run in order to elaborate and improve decision support systems (DSS) for arable and horticultural crops (Kleinhenz et al. 1995). Almost all GCPS participated in the project, which was lead by the GCPS of Rheinland-Pfalz, a country in the southwest of Germany.
The results were far beyond expectations. At first a nation-wide infrastructure has been established for the supply of DSS with complete and plausible agro-meteorological data. A network of agro-meteorological stations has been created, meanwhile consisting of about 100 stations run by the German Meteorological Service (DWD) and about 340 stations owned by GCPS. Data are administered and
stored in a flexible ACCESS — data bank named AGMEDAWIN. In addition a general procedure was elaborated for the development and validation of DSS.
For the main crops DSS were developed, validated and successfully introduced into agricultural practice (Kleinhenz and Jörg 1998). Recently for many pest and disease problems DSS provide the basic crop protection strategy.
As a consequence of the successful project GCPS decided to found and jointly finance a Central Institution for Decision Support Systems in Crop Protection (ZEPP) which is in charge for all aspects of work on DSS in Germany (Kleinhenz et al. 1998). During the last eight years ZEPP developed numerous DSS for various pests and diseases in different crops (Wójtowicz et al. 2006). DSS are employed for the
— estimation of disease/pest risk, — estimation of necessity for treatments,
— forecast of the optimal timing for field assessments, — forecast of the optimal timing for treatments, — recommendation of appropriate pesticides.
Results of DSS were disseminated to the farmers via warning services, using different transmission media (bulletins, letters, faxes and telephone answering machines). In addition DSS results were used in daily face-to-face advisory work.
During the last fifteen years Internet gained more and more acceptance also in the agricultural branch. In 1998 ZEPP by order of the GCPS started with the elaboration of an Internet – based warning service (Kleinhenz and Jörg 2001). Similar services were prepared by plant protection industry. In 1999 warning service information were available for the farmers via Internet. Main reasons for employing Internet for warning service purposes were as follows:
— Internet is the optimal solution for a rapid supply with information,
— Internet provides the joint-infrastructure to feed in all information needed for
decision support from a network of data banks,
— updates of Internet systems can be done centrally, with low labour input and
within a short timespan,
— Internet is the most cost-efficient dissemination system for information. Acceptance of the ZEPP Internet warning service was very high and farmers showed interest in an extended warning service via Internet. They communicated their demand for receiving all relevant information for decision support in crop protection as well as in other fields of agriculture (cultivar choice, fertilisation, soil tillage etc.) by one single comprehensive Internet system.
ISIP – Project
GCPS and German Environment Foundation (DBU) discussed the use of plant protection products and defined common aims: reduction of pesticide application to the minimum needed, maintaining and ensuring farmers’ income from agricultural production and reduce hazardous effects to the environment to the unavoidable minimum. Both institutions decided to start a project on establishing a flexible Internet system to improve decision support in crop protection. Further aim of the project was the elaboration of DSS for arable crops. The three year project started in 2001 with instalation of a small institution (ISIP e.V.) which was in charge of the elaboration of the “Information System Integrated Plant Production” (ISIP). Total funds of the project were € 5.000.000, from which € 2.500.000 were given by DBU and € 2.500.000 by the GCPS. Half of the funds were spent on DSS development and half on the elaboration of the Internet system.
ISIP – System
Architecture of the ISIP – System
The ISIP-system has a three-tier-architecture (Roehrig and Sander 2004): presentation tier — business tier — database tier.
The presentation tier consists mainly of HTML pages to be output to browsers, but other communication channels such as SMS, fax or e-mail can be used as well.
The business tier is based on Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) and consists of two main subsystems: the framework and the management module. The framework is embedded in a J2EE Server (JBOSS) which mediates the data transfer between the database and the presentation tier and provides a platform for other system components. These components comprise of the forecasting models, which are encapsulated within the framework and calculated online. For model developers a generic model component is available, which already implements interfaces to database and presentation tier. The core of the management module is a Content Management System (CMS), which serves as an integration platform for the complete ISIP architecture.
In the database tier data is stored in an IBM DB2 Relative Database Management System (RDBMS) which is supported by both, the J2EE Server and the CMS.
This architecture permits high flexibility in including new components (models, information systems). Due to using Java, cost-efficient public domain software can be used at large as well as a large variety of libraries is available to enhance system functionality.
Information Overview
Within the last year (2005) a multitude of information has been included into ISIP and is accessible to the users. Information presented with the help of ISIP mainly focus on the optimisation of pest and disease control in arable crops. For the most important noxious organisms of cereals, potatoes, sugar beet and oilseed rape forecasting model results, field assessments (monitoring) and recommendation by GCPS extension officers are presented.
In addition comprehensive background information on all relevant pest and disease problems of arable crops and their control are available. In order to minimise risk of surface water pollution a DSS module has been included for the choice of plant protection products in the case that run-offs after field applications may occur (i.e. if heavy rainfall is expected). The inclusion of further DSS for arable and horticultural crops is in preparation. In total ISIP recently provides more than 1000 Internet sites.
Example: Sclerotinia stem rot Internet Warning Service
Sclerotinia sclerotiorum is the most serious fungal pathogen in German
oilseed rape production. Yield losses may reach up to 50%. Stem rot epidemics are strongly dependent on weather conditions during inflorescence emergence and flowering (BBCH 55 to BBCH 67) of the crop. As a consequence yearly routine fungicide treatments are not justified from the economic point of view. Treatments should be based upon actual weather conditions.
From 2002 to 2005 ZEPP in co-operation with Göttingen University developed SkleroPro, a DSS which enables the farmers to optimise control of S. sclerotiorum and reduces fungicide treatments to the minimum needed. SkleroPro is the central element of the German Sclerotinia stem rot warning service (Kleinhenz et al., 2006).
SkleroPro calculates the sum of hours favourable for Sclerotinia infections on the basis of hourly values for temperature, relative humidity and precipitation from BBCH 55 to BBCH 67. Agronomic (yields, crop rotation) and economic aspects (prices) are taken into consideration for decision-making on a plot-specific scale.
SkleroPro is included into the ISIP – system and can be handled easily by the farmers. During periods relevant for Sclerotinia – control in Germany (i.e. second half of April and the whole of May) access to the model is given automatically on the starting page of ISIP. The first information ISIP — users receive on Sclerotinia is an overview map showing the infection risk in their relevant oilseed rape — growing region. In addition they may obtain a comment by the regional advisory officer of the GCPS on control of the disease. Green clouds are shown on the map if within a certain region (represented by a weather station) no or only insignificant infections have occurred. No treatment is needed then. Yellow clouds indicate that
under specific growing conditions a relevant Sclerotinia — risk may occur in the region. In this case the growers should employ SkleroPro for a plot-specific forecast. To achieve this farmers have to give a few information to the model, including name of the plot, appropriate weather station, crop rotation, date when BBCH 55 has been reached, a realistic yield expectation, prices for fungicide and for the crop (per dt of yield) and costs for application.
As a result farmers obtain a recommendation whether a treatment is profitable or not. In addition information is given on actual crop growth stage (calculated by a linked ontogenesis model), the yield increase needed to compensate for the control – costs and on numbers of hours with infection risks in comparison to a threshold value. The additional information should help farmers to interpret the recommendation which has been given.
Validation of SkleroPro has been done on the basis of data from 106 trials carried out from 1994 to 2005 in Germany. The share of economically profitable treatments by employing SkleroPro compared to a routine treatment increased from 35% to 70%. Savings for the farmers went up to € 50 per ha and year. SkleroPro tends to slightly overestimate Sclerotinia risk so that it is unlikely that yield losses due to the fungus occur.
In 2006 the model has been used in practice throughout all German oilseed rape growing regions.
Acceptance and Costs
ISIP is the most advanced Internet-based DSS for plant production in Germany. Many aspects of crop production are covered by ISIP. Although the system is quite complex, acceptance by the farmers is high. In the first year after the project had been finished 12.000 users subscribed for the ISIP system. In 2005 about 190.000 hits per month in the average were registered.
Recently efforts have been made to include ISIP into farmers’ basic professional education (schools) and to give training courses to farmers in order to avoid information overflow by the ISIP system and to concentrate on the specific information needed.
Costs for maintenance and development of the ISIP system (information technology) by ISIP e.V. as well as for DSS development by ZEPP are shared by the GCPS of the 16 German countries. Annual costs for ISIP e.V. are about € 300.000 and for ZEPP € 180.000.
Recently efforts have been taken to expand ISIP to horticultural crops and to improve DSS results and the presentation of the results by employing geographical information systems (GIS).
Literature
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