Greenhouse Crop Protection: Smart Strategies for Pest and Disease Management

The ES_9_PlantHealth Network aims to strengthen the capacity of advisors and farmers to implement sustainable, climate-smart and biologically based pest and disease management strategies in greenhouse horticulture.

The specific objectives of the CoP are to:

Improve farmers’ understanding of biodiversity, auxiliary fauna and conservation biological control as key tools for pest and disease management.

Promote practical training activities within cooperatives to bring technical knowledge closer to farmers and support its application at farm level.

Raise awareness of the role of crop scouts and the importance of regular monitoring for early pest and disease detection.

Develop and share simple, practical protocols for pest monitoring, beneficial insect releases and auxiliary fauna sampling, adapted to different greenhouse contexts.

Support better greenhouse climate management as a complementary strategy for improving crop protection, especially in low- and medium-technology solar greenhouses.

Encourage the use of visual and practical communication materials, such as posters and guidance tools, to promote biological control among farmers.

Identify knowledge gaps and promote the generation and transfer of scientific evidence to improve pest and disease management in greenhouse horticulture.

Through these objectives, the CoP seeks to improve knowledge transfer between advisors, researchers, cooperatives and farmers, contributing to more resilient greenhouse production systems with reduced dependence on chemical inputs and greater use of biodiversity-based solutions.