Advances in Temperate Fruit Pest Management: Challenges and Innovations

This book explores current and future challenges in managing pests of temperate fruit crops such as apples, pears, cherries, peaches, plums, and almonds. These crops are grown widely across temperate regions and are increasingly affected by a range of insect and rodent pests due to climate change, global trade, and evolving farming practices.

The chapters offer a clear overview of both the problems and solutions. Initial chapters introduce key pest threats, including invasive species and quarantine pests, and explain how global conditions are influencing their spread. It discusses new technologies like artificial intelligence, drones, and pheromone-based strategies for early detection, monitoring, and control. It also addresses specific pests such as fruit flies, woolly apple aphid, and rodents in dedicated chapters and highlights biological and microbial control methods, the use of beneficial organisms like parasitoids, and resistance breeding. Other topics include the impact of soil health, the role of endophytes, and regulatory approaches in managing pest risks in global trade.

This book is useful for researchers, extension workers, students, fruit growers, and policymakers. It brings together practical knowledge and recent scientific advancements to support better pest management practices in temperate orchards and ensure long-term crop health and productivity.