Sampling And Monitoring In Crop Protection: Theoretical Basis

This text covers the statistical concepts of sampling in agricultural pest management, showing how to obtain sample data from the field and how to use the data in decision-making. Options may include introducing natural enemies, spraying with insecticide, or adopting a wait-and see approach. Some prior knowledge of pests and how they interact with crops is required of the reader, but only minimal mathematical expertise is assumed, and worked examples using Mathcad are included. Table of Contents: Basic concepts of decision-making and sampling; classifying pest density; evaluating decision rules; theoretical distributions; Iwao's method and the SPRT; bootstrapping and resampling; multiple sources of variation; binomial counts; monitoring decision rules. (Part contents)