Development of a Comprehensive Website and Decision Support System for Peanut Pest Management in the Virginia-Carolina Region.

A comprehensive website and web-based decision support system was created to assist peanut growers in Virginia, and North Carolina.  The objective of the decision aid is to help growers and their advisors in assessing potential risks and benefits of competing management strategies.  The objective of the website is to help these stakeholders identify and manage pests, as well as provide copies of pest management documents.  Users of the website can sign up to receive e-mails with timely alerts about pest management and peanut production during the field season.  The website also displays individual information sheets, authored by the PI’s, that detail various production and management topics (i.e. planting, harvest, and maturity), as well as specific disease and insect identification and control.  The website also features an illustrated glossary, and key word index that links like-publications and topics, individual websites for various university employees involved with peanut production, and links to extension publications.  Both the DSS and website were demonstrated to extension agents and growers in each state through field days and workshops.  Demonstration test plots were established in 2008, and 2009 to evaluate differences in Southern Corn Rootworm and Sclerotinia Blight.  Project PI’s demonstrated the utility of the program using posters and live computer demonstrations.  They also displayed field plots and discussed the resulting risk indices for various pests.  Risk index values were discussed, and agreements were made about the values for pests that exist in both states.  Two separate risk programs were created, one for VA and one for NC.  In an effort to validate the decision aid, field surveys were completed Cooperative Extension agents using real pest management scenarios from peanut fields located in their counties from 2008-2010.  Agronomic information was collected from each field that included planting date, soil type, peanut variety, inoculants, rotation crops, irrigation, planting pattern, pesticides used, and known field histories of each pest included in the decision aid.  This information was entered into the decision aid to assess the risk values for particular pests, and follow up surveys evaluated the end-of-year pest incidence and severity.