All there is to know: Our look on ICM
ICM not only aligns with regulatory frameworks but also anticipates societal and market demands for more sustainable, traceable, and efficient agricultural practices. For those working in the field of crop protection, ICM offers a pathway to innovate solutions, ensuring that products perform effectively within modern, eco-friendly farming systems.
Five pillars
The essence of ICM
The ICM approach minimises the use of and dependence on crop protection products. For each disease, pest, or weed, multiple control methods are combined into a sophisticated strategy to affect different stages of the crop assailants life cycle. Supportive techniques are also used, which - among other things - help estimate the expected effects of measures.
Three mechanisms
ICM in one picture.
Have a look at the image below and see how we define Integrated Crop Management by using 5 pillars, 3 mechanisms and supportive tactics.
Five pillars
ICM looks at various factors that contribute to a healthy crop. It retains the principles of well-known Integrated Pest Management (IPM), but the ICM approach is broader and can be divided into five main pillars: 1) Crop diversity: growing different types of crops in a specific order and spatial arrangement helps reduce the impact of diseases, pests, and weeds. > read more 2) Cultivar choice and cropping strategy: choosing the right variety and method of cultivation affects crop health and weed reduction. > read more
3) Soil, water and nutrients: good care of the soil and proper use of water and manure ensure strong crops. > read more 4) Targeted control: if diseases, pests or weeds occur, they are controlled in a targeted way, as much as possible only where they occur and at the best time, with minimal use of plant protection products. > read more 5) Monitoring and evaluation: by measuring, the effect of choices becomes clear and adjustments can be made. > read more
ICM requires effective, coherent, long-term strategies that sufficiently affect the population dynamics of crop assailants at several stages of their life cycle. The ICM strategy works through three mechanisms:
1) Prevention of establishment: preventing a disease, pest, or weed from establishing itself in a crop, so that a crop cannot be affected by it. 2) Reduction of the adverse impact on the crop: ensuring that a crop is grown so that it suffers as little disruption as possible from disease, pest, or weed if they do occur. 3) Reduction of replenishment of the surviving population during host-free periods: ensuring that a disease, pest, or weed can spread or multiply as little as possible so that the problem is limited in the future.