 By no means all Doom and Gloom!
Outlooks on Pest Management is widely known as a primary source of reliable and up to the minute information on a broad range of topics that are of interest and importance to pest management practitioners, industry and researchers around the world. This continues to be reflected in this issue with articles and news that convey the international perspective that is essential in a globalised industry. However, to remain relevant we must listen and respond to opinions and advice of our readers. Feedback indicates that many appreciate the balance struck between encouraging and worrying news, with a recent comment suggesting that “…in current challenging times it helps to avoid it all being doom and gloom, while still raising the difficult issues we need to confront”. Such comments are very helpful when setting the tone of the publication so please keep them coming.
In this issue, we continue to try to strike the balance between the encouraging and the worrying. Amongst reports on a wide range of subjects in the Regulatory News section, one carries a warning of a growing impact of climate change that is resulting in an increasing risk to water quality, aquatic ecosystems and worrying levels of toxic metal contamination of farmland around the world. On a more positive note, the enactment of new UK regulations designed to facilitate the use of precision breeding technologies in agriculture by offering a more streamlined regulatory process for gene edited crops, and new regulatory approvals/registrations of herbicides, are also highlighted. Our Biotechnology News section carries 8 reports of progress in varying subjects areas, for example, enzyme suppressing plant immune defences that may promote the engineering of Fusarium-resistant crops, whereas less welcome news of the discovery of genetic changes in fungal pathogen populations which may make Phoma stem canker harder to control. Ongoing research in other sectors is yielding improved understanding or new solutions that are essential if we are to meet the ever-increasing challenges we face. For example, our R&D News section has 28 items reporting such advances, reflecting the substantial effort to resolve or alleviate the range of complex difficulties that the industry faces.
An essential first step when tackling pest or disease outbreaks is to understand relevant biology, thus enabling identification of aspects that may underpin the design and optimisation of control approaches. Thus, a major paper by Dr. Glenn Wright focussing on the highly destructive citrus greening disease is an important feature in this issue. The article considers both the disease and its vector, and its effects on both citrus trees and the citrus industry in the USA. Where a disease is also a problem in other areas of the world with similar climatic conditions to those encountered “at home”, useful information can often be obtained from studies of spread and impact conducted in those areas and this aspect has been discussed. Successful methods used to tackle the disease in the USA are presented and the paper concludes with suggestions of approaches that may slow the movement of citrus greening disease and reduce its impact when it arrives in new areas.
An internationally important pest, the Red Palm Weevil is the subject of another article in this issue. Early detection of infestation is difficult as all life stages may be found inside the host palm, and a paper by Mohamed Bo and colleagues investigate the potential use of acoustic sensors to address this issue. They conclude that although the precision of these portable devices is limited, their affordability and ready availability may offer opportunities for using them as a tool to support manual visual inspections and decision making. It is tempting to speculate that the advent of a.i. techniques could offer the potential for training models to improve accuracy of assessments of infestations in the future.
In the third major article of this issue, Dr. Julia Bello-Bravo and co-authors tackle the issue of scaling of integrated pest management (IPM) and other research for development knowledge in the global South. Reaching end users in some regions is a perennial problem that severely impacts accessibility to, and thus uptake of new advances. The paper identifies some primary causal issues before describing a university- based research and scaling program (Scientific Animations Without Borders), which has developed an “encyclopaedia” model for scaling content to provide high quality learning and access to materials for continued learning. This is a fascinating article which provides information that potentially could enhance uptake of findings from a wide range of future work.
Thus, the current issue maintains our target of providing a diverse coverage of pest management advances from across the world that deliver stimulating/practically useful transfer- able information … and it is not all doom and gloom!
Author: Keith Walters, Outlooks on Pest Management (OPM) Editorial Board Member
Published in: Outlooks on Pest Management June 2025 Vol36:3.
Other articles published in OPM The post Outlooks on Pest Management – June 2025 Vol36:3 – Editorial first appeared on International Pest Control Magazine. 
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