Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is no longer a nice-to-have—it’s the operating system for modern horticulture. The hard part is turning principles into day-to-day action.
A recent peer-reviewed study in Crop Protection—“Quantifying integrated pest management adoption in food horticulture” (2025) by Jennifer Byrne, Robert Lillywhite, Henry Creissen, Fiona Thorne, and Lael Walsh—uses a Delphi-style expert process to build a compound IPM score across field, protected, and top-fruit systems. The headline: IPM is widespread, but many growers sit in the low-to-mid maturity range, with clear opportunities to improve consistent measurement, threshold use, and timely response—the “last mile” from observation to action.
Citation: Byrne J., Lillywhite R., Creissen H., Thorne F., Walsh L. Quantifying integrated pest management adoption in food horticulture. Crop Protection, Vol. 191 (2025), Article 107165. (Study credited to the authors and publisher; interpretations here are ours.)
The gaps the research highlights
- Measurement isn’t consistent. Data exists (scouting notes, sticky cards, weather), but it isn’t normalized or trended the same way across teams.
- Thresholds aren’t operationalized. On any given day, it’s not always clear whether a zone is near, at, or over action points.
- Actions lack feedback. It’s hard to tell quickly whether a release or spray materially changed pressure.
These are exactly the jobs software should handle—quietly and reliably—so agronomy judgment can focus on the why and what next.
How IPM Scoutek helps today
IPM Scoutek centralizes the daily facts—pest and disease observations, sticky card counts, routes/coverage, applications, and action thresholds—so the “IPM score” the paper envisions becomes practical data you can act on. This enables:
- Consistent measurement: standardized forms and workflows so you can compare apples to apples over time and across teams.
- Threshold awareness: set points live alongside observations, making today’s status obvious.
- Traceable actions: every release or spray (what/where/when/rate) is linked to the relevant pests and zones.
Under the hood, Scoutek computes
- Moving trends at daily, weekly, six-week, and season levels.
- Threshold proximity alerts so teams know exactly how close they are to action points.
- Simple efficacy checks comparing before vs. after applications or releases.
- Risk signals per pest/zone that blend current pressure, trend strength, sticky-card velocity, and short-term weather lift.
In short, the study calls for better measurement, thresholds, and feedback—and IPM Scoutek builds these into daily workflow without extra paperwork or managers’ time.
Why this matters
- Fewer days over the line. Clear daily alerts prevent quiet creep above action thresholds.
- Better timing, fewer inputs. If a release or spray isn’t moving the needle, you’ll see it sooner.
- Stronger scouting culture. Coverage is measured and directed to the highest-risk zones.
- Faster learning. Real-time information builds confidence in what works, where, and when.
Thank you to the authors
We’re grateful to Byrne, Lillywhite, Creissen, Thorne, and Walsh for advancing how IPM adoption is measured. Their framework helps the sector move from “we do IPM” to “we can prove it—and improve it.”