About us:

The Systemwide Program on Systemwide Program on IPM (SP-IPM) spearheads forward-looking research and outreach programs on crop pest management by pulling together the individual strengths and expertise of several CGIAR Centers and their partners.

The goal of the re-organized SP-IPM is to enhance the achievements of the CGIAR System Priorities and the related Millennium Development Goals through innovative IPM research.

Its mission is to make a significant contribution to the development of more productive and healthy agro-ecosystems through technological innovation and adaptation for improved pest and disease management.

The beneficiaries of SP-IPM are the stakeholders of the international agricultural community, especially in countries of the South, who will adapt the technologies for improved IPM and apply them to their crop management systems.
 
Future collaborative research undertaken by SP-IPM members will take place in three areas highly relevant to the efforts of the international agricultural community to secure adequate production of affordable and healthy food.

These three areas are:

1. Climate Change

2. Food and Feed Safety

3. Agro-ecosystem Resilience

Climate change
Climate change and climate variability are considered major threats to the increasing demand for food in a world with an ever increasing population. The predicted higher variation in current climate patterns will expand the movement of pests and diseases, accelerate their population dynamics, and raise damage intensity levels making farmers vulnerable to both newly introduced pests and diseases, and endemic organisms. SP-IPM research plans to adapt IPM to the challenges of climate change and variability and to provide solutions that assist farmers in the developing world to cope with such outbreaks.

Food and Feed Safety
The right to adequate amounts of food is also the right to healthy food. In addition to the health risks presented by pesticide residues and heavy metals in food and animal feeds, contamination with mycotoxins causes serious food safety problems. Their carcinogenic and immune-suppressing effects in humans and animals have prompted strict regulatory limits on the quantity of these toxins, especially aflatoxins, permitted in food and feeds in many countries. As a consequence, these limits represent a severe non-tariff barrier to trade affecting in particular African countries were infestation levels are high but regulatory controls are largely ineffective. SP-IPM carries out research to reduce contaminants that include pesticides and mycotoxins in foods, feeds and the environment to ensure a supply of safe food and animal feed, and increase the marketability of agricultural products.

Agro-ecosystem Resilience
Agro-ecosystems are complex and diverse biological systems that need to be managed carefully to restore or improve soil, root and plant health which is required for enhanced agricultural production. The ecological relationships between the various components of agro-biodiversity in the various cropping systems are yet to be fully understood. Research undertaken by SP-IPM will broaden the understanding of functional agro-biodiversity and develop habitat management options for the control of important soil and plant pests in key agricultural production systems.

These three research areas will be further strengthened by multidisciplinary cooperation with other scientific disciplines and by expanding knowledge on IPM technologies through capacity building at the NARS in cooperating countries.

For further information, please contact the SP-IPM Secretariat hosted by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Ibadan, Nigeria.