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Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs

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Welcome to Ontario CropIPM integrated pest management training produced by the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Crops Team.

Introduction to Ontario Crop IPM
Understanding Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and using these training tools and resources to your best advantage.

Quick Choices
Fast access to information on IPM techniques, pest identification, herbicide injury symptoms, and soil management problems.

Choose your crop
In-depth pest management knowledgebase, compiled by crop. Improve your skills in diagnosing pests and disorders and learn when and how they impact your crop.

Identifying Pests through the Identification Key
Use the Identification Key to help recognize your insect, disease or weed issue.

Answers to Soil Problems
Use the soil diagnostics section to learn how the soil environment can impact your crop.

Scouting Calendars
As you scout throughout the season, keep up-to-date with which pests may be active in your field.

Testing Your Knowledge
Ready to test your knowledge? Take a quick quiz to see if you know your stuff.

Introduction to Ontario Crop IPM

Integrated pest management (IPM) is an approach to pest control that considers all management options, to maintain pests below an economic injury level. Field scouting is a vital component of IPM, which provides an objective summary of the crop condition and pest situation in a field. The knowledge to recognize and measure impacts to your production on a day-to-day basis is invaluable when making management decisions.

Ontario CropIPM contains Ontario-specific IPM training and resources for Brassica crops, cucurbits, peppers, sweet corn, strawberries and tomatoes. The crop-specific modules take you through the most common insects, diseases, disorders, weeds and herbicide injuries that impact these crops in Ontario. Distinguishing look-alikes and diagnosing soil problems are also covered. Scouting calendars, identification keys, and a glossary are additional resources to assist you in management decisions.

Utilizing the content will help you correctly identify problems in your crop production and allow you to make timely management decisions with the potential to reduce input costs under beneficial environmental conditions.

Quick Choices

“Quick Choices” provide fast access to commonly asked field scouting questions (i.e. What weed is that? What does boron deficiency look like?). A library of IPM knowledge is gathered here for your convenience.

Choose your crop

Ontario CropIPM has all of the pertinent in-depth pest management training modules compiled by crop in the “Choose your crop” section. Start by selecting a crop and you’ll have access to crop scouting calendars, crop-specific insect, disease and weed information, economic thresholds, along with identification keys, herbicide injury and soil diagnostic information for the selected crop—all available through the navigation links on the left side. Information is organized into basic and advanced training.

Identifying Pests Through the Identification Key

Insect and disease identification key(s) are provided for each crop, as well as for broadleaf and grassy weeds. If you have a pest problem you can’t identify, try using one of these keys.

Access the keys through each specific crop or through the Quick choices. Each key will take you through a series of steps where you will have a choice of two or more descriptions, or a Yes/No question. Choose what best fits your specimen’s description and continue until identification is made. If neither alternative fits your specimen’s description, or if the identification is incorrect, use the back button to try again. If this doesn’t work, the particular pest or life stage may not be included in this training.

Answers to Soil Problems

Soil Diagnostics helps you to understand how soil properties like drainage, nutrients, pH, structure and texture can impact your crop. It gives you the tools needed for plant and soil sampling, and for diagnosing soil problems like compaction and erosion.

Find Soil Diagnostics through the Quick choices menu from the home page, or through the navigation bar in each individual crop. From there, browse through the topics listed to learn more.

Scouting Calendars

Scouting calendars are included for each crop. The calendars are a one page graphic representation of the activity patterns of pest populations throughout the growing season.

Choose a crop, and access the scouting calendars through the navigation bar on the left. Use the calendars as general guidelines for which pests to expect when you are scouting.