Lesson 8 – Plant Health Fosters Pest Suppression
Presentation Recording
Presenters
Miguel Altieri, Co-Director of the Centro Latino Americano de Investigaciones Agroecologicas and Professor Emeritus at University of California, Berkeley in Agroecology
Miguel has conducted most of his research in California and Latin America working closely with farmers on implementing principles of agroecology to design productive, biodiverse and resilient farming systems. He has written more than 250 scientific articles and more than 40 books. He is also a farmer in the hillsides of south west Antioquia, Columbia, where together with his wife Dr. Clara Nicholls established an agroecological lighthouse promoting food sovereignty projects in impoverished neighboring rural communities.
Amelie Gauden, Associate Professor and Endowed Chair in Agroecology at the Department of Plant Science at the University of California Davis
Amelie’s research explores how diversification and healthy soil ecosystems can help agriculture meet its sustainability and resilience goals. She integrates concepts and methodologies from various discipines to measure outcomes of ecological intensification and agroecological designs on soil health, C sequestration and drought resilience. She also studies plant-microbe interactions in the rhizosphere and the ecological functions central to crop production in regenerative systems.
Upon successfully completing this lesson, participants will be able to:
- Describe how plant diversity and soil biology/fertility interact to sponsor plant health.
- Assess the importance of plant diversity to enhance biological pest control.
- Learn how plants and microbes co-exist and their role in pest suppression.
- Describe a case study where leafhopper numbers depended on a plant hormone mediated by rhizosphere microbial communities.
Articles & Resources
- Reducing pest incidence through synergies between plant diversity and soil microbial ecology by Altieri et al. 2024
- Organic management promotes natural pest control through altered plant resistance to insects by Blundell et al. 2020
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Installing Habitat to Increase Farm Diversity, WFA Publication