Farmers given access to over 50 years of crop pest and disease data

Following a three-year project funded by Defra, Adas launched the new platform that has been developed using current and historic pest and disease data collected as part of the annual Defra Survey of Crop Pests and Diseases. 

It is now open to growers, agronomists, researchers and members of the public. 

Every year since 1970 approximately 300 samples of winter wheat and 90 samples of winter oilseed rape, along with information on pesticide inputs, have been collected from randomly selected fields across England and Wales and assessed for signs of pest and disease infestation.  

With the launch of this new online platform, stakeholders and the public now have open access to this extensive pest and disease database and can use it to identify trends and map nationwide crop pressures over the last half-century.  

All data displayed on the platform is completely anonymised and amalgamated on a 10km2 basis, Adas confirmed. 

Insightful data available for everyone

Defra and ADAS said they hope that opening up the access to this data will lead to improvements in pest and disease risk forecasting, inform crop breeding priorities, and could assist with understanding the impact of pesticide legislation and climate change. 

Individual farmers could use it to explore trends across seasons and explore for themselves the impact of IPM choices such as variety choice, sowing date decisions or different agronomy practices. 

Julie Smith, Adas principal research scientist and lead for the project said: “This is the first time since the Defra Pest and Disease Survey began over 50 years ago that all the insightful data collected from the field is readily available.  

“We’ve worked hard to ensure this powerful dataset gives an accurate representation of growing pressures across England and Wales over multiple decades and that the data is easy to explore and visualise.  

“We want this to be a useful open resource for anybody wishing to explore and understand crop pests and disease trends, whether they are a farmer, researcher or a policy maker.” 

The Defra Survey of Crop Pests and Diseases will continue in 2024 and this year’s data will be added to the database once all the 2024 winter wheat and winter oilseed rape crop samples have been collected and analysed. 

Ms Smith added: “This fantastic resource would not have been possible without the thousands of farmers who have taken part in the Defra survey over the last 50 years.

“Their contributions and continued support have meant everyone now can look back, see the bigger picture of crop pest and disease emergence, and find new ways to build our national resilience to crop disease and pest threats.

“We also fully acknowledge Fera’s contribution in the coordination of surveys over the past years.” 

The platform can be accessed through the Pest and Disease Survey website. 

Read more arable news.