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2011: Sustainable Pest Management and Yield Increase Strategies
The best option for increasing food production is to maximize yields from existing farmland. Potatoes are a key crop for Andean farmers, but production is threatened by enormous losses to the Guatemalan tuber moth. Cornell researchers aim to develop a sustainable pest management strategy for Andean farmers, using local resources to make the target crop unattractive to tuber moths, provide an alternate trap crop, and harness natural plant responses to the pests to increase yield.