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Biography |
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Dr Gia (Gudbjorg Inga) Aradottir received her BSc from the University of Iceland, MSc from Royal Holloway, University of London and a PhD from Imperial College London, all in Biology. Her research has focused on insect behaviour, taxonomy, ecology and population genetics, and previous work experience includes working at the Natural History Museum in London, BioNet International and the Icelandic Institute of Natural History, before joining the Department of Biological Chemistry and Crop Protection at Rothamsted Research, UK. She is a keen science communicator and has been interviewed in local, national and international press, as well as giving regular talks to students, interest groups and stakeholders.
Crop protection is an integral component of safeguarding the yield potential of our crops, which in turn is closely linked with food security. This, coupled with a keen interest in entomology, has formed Dr Aradottir’s research interests in the areas of insect-plant interactions, insect pest behaviour and management in agro-ecosystems. At the mechanistic level, studying plant responses to insect pests and how they are able to defend themselves helps us elucidate resistance traits in plants, whilst field trials looking at insect host location, population build up and effect on the plant is an integral component of ensuring identified resistance traits work under field conditions. The end goal is to identify beneficial traits which can be translated into elite crop varieties and be useful in an agricultural context.
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Abstract |
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The future of crop protection |
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Crop protection is again at the forefront of people’s minds. Many of the pesticides we have relied on are now failing, pesticide resistance in crop pests is a serious challenge and this coupled with new pesticide restrictions in Europe has reduced the arsenal of crop protection strategies available to farmers. A renewed emphasis on sustainability has also focused efforts on alternative control strategies.
Novel technologies have emerged in the past few years which can be used for enhancing crop protection, advances in molecular methodologies and remote sensing can be used to put scientific discoveries into practise for improved pest control. In order to exploit these novel technologies we need a comprehensive understanding of all the components of the agri-environment, from insect pest biology and behaviour to plant genetics and biochemistry. Research efforts are increasingly focussed on looking for resistance and defence mechanisms in wild relatives of modern crop plants that have been lost through millennia of breeding, which has traditionally focused on crop yield and quality, with the unintended consequence of natural plant defence mechanisms being lost along the way. These mechanisms can be exploited by incorporating traits into elite crop germplasm, as well as providing farmers with decision support tools to improve targeting of control efforts to where they are needed. With a strong base in fundamental science these novel strategies need to be designed for the environment they are to be used in, whether that is use by smallholder farmers, larger scale agricultural settings, or in protected horticultural environments.
Development of resistant crops and improved plant defence will be a central component of future crop protection, with improved agronomy and habitat manipulation, pest mapping and forecasting, as well as biological control playing a big part.
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