Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

Annual Report of NCERA 222

Objective 1: Increase the capacity of members to implement Extension based programs.

Accomplishment.  Real Time Sharing of Pest Activity

Activities: NDSU shared how they used crop scout data and ARC GIS to create and share timely maps of pest incidence and severity with growers. Readers of the Crop Pest Report Reader were surveyed to determine utility of information.

Outputs: Maps were made from scouting visits to 707 wheat, 220 barley, 563 soybean, and 181 sunflower fields and shared on the NDSU website, social and traditional media sites.

Outcomes: 91.6% of survey respondents agreed that the IPM information was timely • 91.5% indicated increased knowledge about insects and diseases and management • 94.8% agreed that the information provided on pests, IPM and crop production was reliable and unbiased87% of survey respondents used outputs for pest identification • 90.9% used pictures/videos of pests, pest damage or crop problems • 73.5% used IPM maps of pest incidence and severity • 74% used recommended pest scouting protocols • 75% used economic/action thresholds to make pest management decisions • 74.3% used recommended pest management options for control

Future Plans: Continued sharing of tools.

Milestones: NDSU website saw 54.1% increase in new visitors

Impacts.  See accomplishments.

Objective 2: Review, prioritize and disseminate IPM research and Extension needs. (Sync with notes)

Accomplishment .  Reassessing information delivery during Covid

Activities: COVID-19 reduced the number of face-to-face meetings including field days and classroom training sessions in every state in our working group. As a result, electronic delivery of IPM information as newsletters or blogs became even more important. Each State IPM Program explored and adopted new virtual  live and recorded formats to replace face to face meetings.

Outputs:. Representative Virtual Meetings, Electronic Activity by State:

Illinois- Expanded program of Distance Presentations to include commercial and home growers. Web sites revised.

Iowa – Crop Protection Network conducted webinars. Biweekly Zoom meetings with Extension field staff to improve communication with county offices.

Indiana; Virtual Field Days held at 6 farm locations for field and specialty crops. Used 10 years of webinar user data to publish article on best practices for webinars.

Kansas  -Kansas State Garden Hour held 15 times over the course of the season., 3833 live, 2523 asynchronous views.

Michigan- The Bine and Dine hop and webinar series is representative of activity in the state.  Six webinars were offered to hop growers.

Missouri- Missouri Town Hall Series and Video Production held 74 sessions and reached 4,173 attendees. Recordings were used to produce 138 videos (Town Hall Snippets) posted on YouTube that reached 12, 518 viewers. Missouri Weed Science Program produced a field day video series.

Minnesota- Weekly webinars were held over 20 weeks to meet requests for updates on agronomic and specialty crops. Five additional episodes were added to the IPM Podcasts for Field Crops. Over 1000 podcast listeners were recorded per day during the soybean aphid outbreak.

Ohio  Pumpkin Power Virtual Field Day.… Specialists used new technology to develop a virtual tour of a research plots. Over 80% of attendees liked the format and some thought it easier to fine details of field plots than when in person. 

South Dakota–Weekly Webinar Series were recorded and videos produced to supplant meetings.

Wisconsin -  Virtual pest management update meetings and on-line scout training classes. reached 450 people. 320,000 Views to You-Tube Channel in 2020.

Outcomes: The forced switch to virtual delivery increased reach and engagement of programs in every state.

Future Plans: Although, stakeholders responded positively to virtual opportunities, many  appear to prefer the face-to-face meetings. Some form of hybrid live/virtual/ asynchronous programming will be necessary going forward. Program evaluation will be critical to determining the direction in for each commodity and state.

Milestones: More users accessed about IPM.

Impacts:  Surveys of program attendees in each state indicated significant majorities received IPM information they could use that would be economically advantageous to their operations.

Objective 3: Increase collaboration and coordination between state IPM programs, NCIPMC-related working groups and relevant NC multistate committees.

Acomplishment 1. Soybean gall midge.  

Activities: A stakeholder meeting was held in Nebraska in March 2020 to invite input into research and extension needs on soybean gall midge. Participants included growers, crop consultants, industry agronomists and Nebraska Extension personnel. Roundtable discussions were summarized and share with cooperating entomologists in SD, IA and MN.

Outcomes: A website; soybeangallmidge.org was established to share results of multistate research and extension efforts by entomologists from University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Iowa State University, South Dakota State University and Univ. of Minnesota. soybeangallmidge.org had over 2,200 unique visitors, 3,994 page views from 26 countries and 39 states within the USA since it became live in May of 2020

Accomplishment 2..Working Groups Supported.

These include members from the LGUs in the region: ISU - 14 members; KSU - 5 members; MSU - 47 members; NDSU - 17 members; OSU - 35 members; Purdue - 40 members; SDSU - 5 members; U of IL - 20 members; U of MN - 18 members; U of MO - 3 members; U of NE - 9 members; U of WI - 18 members. 2020 funded Working Groups - Great Lakes Vegetable; Pulse Crops; IPM4Bees; Sunflower Pathology; Great Lakes Hop; Agriculture and Wildlife Co-Existence; Great Lakes Urban Ag IPM; Organic and IPM; Midwest Grows Green Lawn and Land Forum; Midwest Fruit; Public Gardens as Sentinels Against Invasive Plants; North central Nursery IPM; Hemp; Managed Pollinator Protection Plans. There were 607 members for the 16 working groups, including some that belong to more than one working group. Members were from 199 different affiliations (including 57 colleges and universities), and were from 43 states, District of Columbia, 6 Canadian provinces and 2 other countries. Four working groups no longer ask for funding but continue to meet and collaborate. They are the Field Crop Extension Entomologists; School IPM; Great Lakes Fruit Workers; and Food and Farming Narrative.

Objective 4: Facilitate multistate programming to share curriculum and educational materials.

Activities: Scouting School (Iowa State). We started planning for the multi-state Integrated Pest Management virtual crop scouting program with Iowa State University and other regional state schools. Staff from the Plant Clinic and from the Wide-Area monitoring program keep in close contact with Illinois Department of Agriculture and USDA personnel to update them with new detections or identification of regulated pests or pathogens.