Pest Diagnosis and Control Strategies for Fruit and Vegetable Plants

Dear Colleagues,

Fruit and vegetable production is constantly threatened by insect pests, diseases and weeds, as well as new invasive species of harmful organisms. Any of these threats can restrict market access and food supply chains, and have an impact on natural and agro ecosystems. The basis for protecting crops from pests today is Integrated Pest Management (IPM), which involves the proper and timely pest diagnosis and pest-adapted control. Accurate and rapid pest detection and identification is the first step towards the use of effective control strategies, which can help growers avoid costly mistakes that lead to economic losses. Nowadays, various diagnostic tools ("decision support systems") are being developed and used that allow the fast and efficient identification of harmful organisms so that an accurate and timely choice of a specific pest control strategy can be implemented.

The purpose of this Special Issue “Pest Diagnosis and Control Strategies for Fruit and Vegetable Plants” is to present innovative studies, approaches, tools and techniques that can be successfully used in pest diagnosis or as efficient control measures in fruit and vegetable production. These also include innovative articles on molecular and geometric morphometrics diagnostic tools, the implementation of artificial intelligence in pest detection, and any control strategy that can suppress the pest in an environmentally friendly and cost-efficient manner.

Dr. Maja Čačija
Dr. Ivan Juran
Dr. Carmelo Bonsignore
Guest Editors

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