Integrated management of Insect Pests on Canola and other Brassica Oilseed Crops

Dr. Gadi V.P. Reddy has been an Entomologist/Insect Ecologist at Montana State University Western Triangle Agricultural Research Center since 2012. Prior to that he spent 10 years in Guam working as a Chemical Ecologist and Entomologist. He has more than 25 years of entomological research, teaching and extension experience and has worked in various countries on different programs. Dr. Reddy has a research background in pest management, biological control, behavioral and chemical ecology and multitrophic interactions. Dr Reddy has 150 publications in international journals. He serves as Editor for Nature Scientific Reports, PLOS ONE, Environmental Entomology, Annals of the Entomological Society of America, and Florida Entomologist. He was also Co-Editor for a multi-authored book Biological Control of Tropical Weeds Using Arthropods published by Cambridge University Press in 2009.

Dr. Surendra Dara is an entomologist with more than 25 years of experience in IPM and microbial control. He worked on numerous invasive and endemic species of arthropods and plant pathogens. Dr. Dara has a strong research and extension background working on irrigation, nutrient, and pest management issues, biostimulants, and biological soil amendments to develop sustainable agricultural solutions. His research and extension covered commodities such as alfalfa, cassava, cotton, small fruits, and vegetables serving agricultural communities locally, regionally, and internationally. Dr. Dara has authored/co-authored more than 400 scientific and extension articles, which include three co-edited books, four co-edited special issues of journals, 25 book chapters, and 54 peer-reviewed journal articles. He has extensive international outreach experience training farmers in Bangladesh, Guatemala, Haiti, Jamaica, Kosovo, Moldova, Mozambique, Myanmar, and Zimbabwe. He received multiple national awards for his internationally recognized research and extension work. He holds editorial responsibilities for multiple journals and is currently the Past President of the Plant-Insect Ecosystems Section of the Entomological Society of America and the Chair of the Meetings Committee of the Society for Invertebrate Pathology.

Heikki MT Hokkanen is currently an Adjunct Professor at the Stockbridge School of Agriculture, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA. He is professor Emeritus of agricultural zoology at the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry, University of Helsinki. He holds a Lic. Phil. degree in ecology and natural resource management (1978. Univ. Jyväskylä, Finland), and a PhD in applied entomology (1983, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA). His main interest and focus of work has been on integrated control of pests, including trap cropping and all aspects of biological control. In recent years his interests have covered pollinators, and plant-derived bioactive compounds for plant protection applications.

Ingeborg Menzler-Hokkanen is at the Stockbridge School of Agriculture, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA. Previously she worked over 20 years as researcher at the Department of Agricultural Sciences, University of Helsinki. She has an MSc-degree in agricultural economics from Göttingen University, Germany; MSc-degree in agricultural economics from Cornell University, USA; and a PhD from the Helsinki School of Economics. After a solid research and publication record within economics, she has focused on the socioeconomic and ecological aspects of plant biotechnology, and of pest and pollinator management.

Francisco Rubén Badenes-Pérez was born in Xàtiva (Valencia), Spain. He studied a MS in Agricultural Sciences at the Universitat Politècnica de Valencia, Spain (1998) and a MS in Plant Protection and Pest Management at the University of California, Davis, US (2001), conducting his MS thesis on the monitoring and management of San Jose Scale (Homoptera:Diaspididae) in almond orchards. He later specialized in Entomology (PhD, Cornell University, US, 2005) and conducted research as a postdoctoral researcher at Cornell University (US) and at the Pacific Cooperative Studies Unit-University of Hawaii at Manoa (US) and as a group leader at the Department of Entomology of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology (Germany). In his free time he has been growing a small plot of several citrus species for many years. Currently his main research is the areas of trap cropping, insectary plants, host-plant resistance, biological control, and pollinator conservation. He works as a tenured scientist at the Spanish National Research Council.