Precision agriculture in polish integrated plant protection

Abstract

Precision agriculture opens new directions for the plant protection in Poland. Polish accession to the European Union has introduced a number of legislative acts in the force. One of them is Directive 2009/128/EC of the European Parlament and the Council of 21 October 2009 establishing a framework for the Community action to achieve the sustainable use of pesticides. Article 14 of this Directive says that member states shall take all necessary measures to promote low pesticide input pest management, giving wherever possible priority to non-chemical methods. From January 1st. 2014 professional users of pesticides should switch to practices and products with the lowest risk to human health and the environment. Farmers have to use integrated pest control only. Idea of the integrated pest control fits into the system of precision agriculture, because help farmers make the best decisions with regard to planting, fertilizing and harvesting crops. In plant protection precision crop management is still in the experimental phase. Plant protection with use of the instruments of precision agriculture is the element of agriculture production. Precision agriculture includes yield monitoring, yield mapping (with using Global Positioning System – GPS), variable rate fertilizer, weed mapping, variable spraying and many others. In precision agriculture the use of plant protection involves determination of the type, location and severity of the pest. For the accurate determination of the pest Institute of Plant Protection apply different tools: yellow traps, Johnson’s aspirators and light trap. For determination of diseases we use volumetric spore trap and for minimizing outflows of herbicides we use Decision Support Systems (DSS). Important part in precision plant protection play sprayers equipment which use variable rate application (VRA). So due to VRA we use less chemical plant protection products which is important for environment protection.