Factors that contribute to quality monitoring

Knowledge of likely pests/benefits and their life cycle: It is essential when planning your monitoring program. As well as visual identification, you need to know where on the plant to look and what is the best time of the day to get a representative sample.

Monitoring frequency and pest focus: It should be directed at crop stages likely to incur economic damage. Critical stages may include seedling emergence and flowering/grain formation.

Sampling Technique: It is important to ensure a representative portion of the crop has been monitored since pest activity is often patchy. Having defined sampling parameters (e.g. number of samples per paddock and number of leaves per sample) helps with sampling consistency. Actual sampling techniques including sample size and number will depend on crop type, ag,e, and paddock size and is often a compromise between the ideal number and location of samples and what is practical regarding time constraints and distance covered.

Balancing random sampling with areas of obvious damage is a matter of common sense. Random sampling aims to give a good overall picture of what is happening in the field, but any obvious hot spots should also be investigated. The relative proportion of hotspots in a field must be kept in perspective with less heavily infested areas.