For many years Crop Defenders has been empowering greenhouse growers through education and training in eco-friendly biological pest control methods.
Crop Defender Academy was founded in 2018 to further its non-commercial and unbiased educative role, and launched its first program—IPM Mastery—a 5-day intensive, interactive and practical training course on November 26th. Here, greenhouse growers learned many skills in leadership, early diagnosis of common and uncommon pests, proactive and curative bio treatments, and many other in-depth topics.
IPM Mastery is a program which simplifies this complicated science, and takes such training to a new level by providing a microscope for each participant, and bringing live bug dorms (chambers containing pest infested plants) as additional explanatory mediums.
Approaching the financial consequences of ineffective decisions and inadequate treatment gives the training a new dimension, especially after introducing some tactics to substantially enhance efficiency and profitability. This has allowed the attendees to openly state that after the first day of the training they could substantially improve their companies’ annual profitability.
The course focused on creating the right mindset for IPM leaders with various leadership styles and team empowerment strategies, in particular regarding scouting and bio application teams. The training involved self and team empowerment, NLP (Neuro-linguistic programming), cultural, mechanical, chemical and biological methods, and curative vs. preventative control measures for different pests.
A major emphasis was on the early conjecture of understanding life stages and behavior of the pests and biologicals.
The course also briefly approached the plant diseases topic and more in-depth training will be offered in the upcoming IPM Mastery Training which will be specialized in greenhouse crop diseases. A local personal trainer led trainees to perform challenging yet fun physical exercises.
The course was led by renowned speakers starting with Dr. Ishtiaq Rao, Horticultural Entomologist Suzanne Wainwright-Evans, Todd Mason, and Dr. John Sutton in addition to the Crop Defenders IPM Strategist team – Tina Friesen and Nicole Stewart. The training was concluded by Dr. Ishtiaq recapping the key topics covered during the five days.
For more information:
Crop Defenders
Dr. M. Ishtiaq Rao, Ph.D.
Business Manager
150 Fraser Road, Leamington ON N8H 4E7 Canada
phone: +1 866-300-2929
fax:+1 519-250-4972
ishtiaq@cropdefenders.com
www.cropdefenders.com