Ali Karley
Projects
This project was selected for funding from the Project Call: “Enhancing preparedness against pests and diseases: plugging evidence gaps for Scotland”.
From this project there will be an improved understanding of potential risks from plant pathogens under future climate scenarios to inform future priorities for pathogen detection and surveillance efforts. The biophysical modelling will be added to with qualitative data from existing Scottish Government funded stakeholder consultation research.
The project will also identify knowledge gaps for further research, such as in biology, host distributions, and other biophysical factors influencing pathogen spread as required by the model, as well as a shared understanding with stakeholders of priority concerns regarding future plant health risks.
This project will look to improve the flow of IPM knowledge and its uptake to increase the resilience of Scotland’s crops to pests and diseases, whilst reducing reliance on pesticides.
The drivers and barriers to further adoption of IPM practices for different decision makers and for different farm types will be identified, improving the ability to tailor IPM research and knowledge transfer and exchange activities to consider, if not overcome, those barriers and improve uptake.
The knowledge required to identify different psyllid species is highly specialised but is essential in order to gain a wider understanding of the disease threat that such insects cause. As few in Scotland have this specialisation (including SASA), it is deemed important to up-skill others by running a training course on psyllid identification for entomologists within Scottish organisations to better enable Scotland to deal with possible Lso threats both now and in the future.
Impact:
This project will contribute to Scottish Government’s ability to control pests / diseases by increased knowledge on the presence and distribution of Liberibacter solonacearum and its host psyllids in Scotland and the potential of these organisms to cause and spread disease.
Publications
Interdisciplinary Analysis of Plant Health Threats to Arable and Horticultural Crops in Scotland
This project took a unique cross-disciplinary approach using biophysical risk modelling combined with social science methods to analyse the threat from emerging plant health threats to both arable and horticultural crops in Scotland.
Understanding crop producers’ perceptions around crop health decision making and the impact of that on key metrics such as pesticide usage
Increased uptake of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) measures on Scottish farms will be key in improving resilience against pests, weeds, and diseases, and maintaining or improving crop yields and farm profitability, whilst reducing environmental impact and reliance on pesticides. The aim of this project therefore was to improve the flow of IPM knowledge and its uptake and identify the drivers and barriers to further adoption of IPM practices for different decision makers and for different farm types.
Assessing the potential of the psyllid Trioza anthrisci to vector Liberibacter solanacearum (Lso) in Scotland
The aim of the project was to assess the distribution and population numbers of the psyllid Trioza anthrisci and it’s potential as a vector of ‘Candidatus Liberibacter solanacearum’ (Lso). The project has allowed the PHC to better understand the distribution and number of T. anthrisci populations in carrot growing areas to better inform assessment of the risk of disease transmission to crops in Scotland.