An injury caused by pests is defined as any observable deviation from the normal (healthy) crop. Injury may lead to damage/crop loss, i.e any detectable decrease in quantity and/or quality of a crop output. Damages can lead to economic losses (but the relationship between damage and economic loss is not systematic). A yield loss, the most commonly studied sort of crop loss, is defined as a quantitative direct crop loss.
In this section of QuantiPest, we focus on quantification of pest injuries, observable in the field. They can be characterised by a wide range of methods, often based on prevalence, incidence and severity assessments. We also share methods to quantify the pest populations themselves.
We present global concepts on pest quantification methodolgy in the first part of this section. A second part lists different crops and provides quantification protocols for pests and pests injuries affecting them.