Biovigilance: A holistic approach to agriculture

Researchers at the Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu Research Centre in Quebec are working with the horticultural industry to develop effective and sustainable control methods against new diseases and pests. Learn more about this new approach to research.

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Full Video Transcript:

Every year, horticultural crops are affected by diseases and invasive organisms that affect their health and productivity. These pests incur losses for agricultural producers and they have an impact on everyone’s grocery bill.
Researchers at the Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu Research Centre in Quebec are working with the horticultural industry to develop effective and sustainable control methods.Many research teams, such as Odile Carisse’s team, are in biovigilance mode.
Odile Carisse: Biovigilance is a new way of approaching research. Rather than studying disease and pest problems separately, we look at them as a whole. Using a biovigilance approach, we focus on soil health, plant health and cultural practices that will enhance productivity and discourage pests.
Using a biovigilance approach -- working on the whole system – we’ve discovered that certain herbicides facilitate soil fungi that attack plants. We would not have thought about this in the past. If researchers in herbology are working without speaking to researchers in plant pathology, well, we solve one problem while creating another.
If we look at the whole picture, we are better able to predict a new problem that might emerge. The goal is to help producers with sustainability.
The four pillars of biovigilance are climate change, agricultural practices, new pests and the social aspect. And the social aspect greatly influences agricultural systems.
For example, kale has become trendy. Everyone wants to eat kale. So, this means there are more acres of kale growing.
Well, this means that new pests will settle in. Let’s think about the problems that are likely to emerge and find solutions before these problems cause economic issues in our industry.]
Narrator: Several scientific innovations developed at the Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu RDC are simplifying the life of vegetable growers.
One example is the spore sensor. It’s a screening tool to detect the presence of the types of fungi that destroy crops. The sensor was developed in collaboration with the PRISME Consortium. Southern Quebec is an intensive vegetable-producing region. Here we produce approximately 70% of the total lettuce crop in Canada.
Our main competitors are our American neighbours. In my opinion, remaining competitive is our biggest issue. We need to increase yields, decrease production costs and maintain a high quality product. At this point in time, we are interested in studying the spread of diseases that are either transmitted by the wind or that are also transmitted by the soil. We have worked at developing integrated control approaches using spore sensors for diseases that are transmitted by the wind for crops such as lettuce, onions, potatoes. With the spore sensors, over the last ten years, we have been able to significantly reduce the use of fungicides to fight diseases.
We calculated that we saved an average of 25% in fungicides compared with the period when we were not using spore sensors. Producers are reacting very positively to the concept of biovigilance.They are very aware that, for profitable agriculture, the equation must include sustainability and consumers.
The interaction between producers and researchers means, I believe, that we will be able to manage the threats.
Hervé Van Der Heyden: The research that is conducted at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada is critical for the progress of agriculture in Quebec and across the country.