What is Croprotect?
CROPROTECT is a web-based knowledge exchange system to provide farmers and agronomists with guidance on pest, weed and disease management, especially in situations where effective pesticides are not available and alternative approaches are required.
Sign Up NowThe Croprotect Team
CROPROTECT is being developed by crop protection experts from Rothamsted Research with technical help from Ether Creative.
Jon West
Jon has a background in Plant Pathology and is building the content on diseases. Jon has been at Rothamsted since 1997 and has a keen interest in the science into practise dimension of his research.
Laura Crook
Laura has a background in weed ecology. She is managing the content of the weeds pages as well as general management of the Croprotect site. Laura has been at Rothamsted since 2014 and has a passion for ensuring science research is communicated to the end-users.
Ether Creative
We're ether. A team of super talented and passionate designers and developers, crafting the future for our clients through digital channels. We're the agency you've been looking for.
Previous Contributors
CROPROTECT is extremely grateful to Toby Bruce for creating the website, app and Twitter account and for his work on the Pests section. He is now based at Keele University.
Also Stephen Moss for his work on the Weeds section, who has since retired from Rothamsted Research and works as a consultant weed ecologist.
What is Croprotect Doing?
The knowledge exchange framework being built is web-based and comprises a number of linked modules:
A grower interface
A geographic information system
Module gathering information
A grower interface
An information delivery module
Growers and agronomists can interact with CROPROTECT to obtain information about managing pests, weeds and diseases. CROPROTECT allows rapid transfer of information to farmers and agronomists and actively involves a growing community of users. It is a two-way system and allows us to obtain a detailed picture of specific challenges growers face as conventional pesticide options are diminished such as black-grass in winter wheat and flea beetle in oilseed rape. The basic framework is generic and kept as simple as possible as units are built to provide information about each of the major UK pest/weed/disease threats to crops.
CROPROTECT provides web-based knowledge sharing to support growers with information about integrated pest management (IPM) and alternatives to pesticides. Currently much of the information that is readily available relates only to pesticides and there is a lack of awareness of alternatives. Information is also needed because alternatives are often more complicated to use.