Decision Making in Integrated Pest Management and Bayesian Network

Timely availability of expert support to the farmers for appropriate decision-making on ‘whether and what
pest management option is required’ is imperative for effective Integrated Pest Management (IPM). For
several decades Economic Threshold Level (ETL) has been the basis for decision-making but in modern
IPM emphasis is given on agro-ecological situation wherein IPM decisions are based on large range of
pest relevant information such as crop health, natural enemies, weather etc. beside pest incidence
scientifically obtained through farmers’ field scouting. But large farming community in India can rather
obtain the tentative information of this kind, consisting uncertainties. Bayesian Network (BN),anartificial
intelligence approach could help in developing technique/model to deal with tentative pest relevant
information which can be used in field scouting based IPM Decision Support Systems (DSSs) to automate
the process of advising appropriate pest management option to the farmers on the basis of tentative agro-
ecological situation of their fields