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.

Recently Added Phoma stem canker of oilseed rape →

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.