Optimal and sustainable management of a soilborne banana pest

TL;DR

This paper develops an eco-friendly, optimized strategy for managing a banana pest through fallow periods, balancing profit and environmental impact over multiple seasons using a proven optimization approach.

Contribution

It introduces a multi-seasonal model for pest control via fallow periods, proves the existence of an optimal allocation, and proposes an adaptive random search algorithm for solution.

Findings

Longer fallow periods with fewer cropping seasons increase profit.

Optimal strategies balance profit maximization and soil health.

Adaptive algorithm effectively finds near-optimal solutions.

Abstract

In this paper we propose an eco-friendly optimization of banana or plantain yield by the control of the pest burrowing nematode \textit{Radopholus similis}. This control relies on fallow deployment, with greater respect for the environment than chemical methods. The optimization is based on a multi-seasonal model in which fallow periods follow cropping seasons. The aim is to find the best way, in terms of profit, to allocate the durations of fallow periods between the cropping seasons, over a fixed time horizon spanning several seasons. The existence of an optimal allocation is proven and an adaptive random search algorithm is proposed to solve the optimization problem. For a relatively long time horizon, deploying one season less than the maximum possible number of cropping seasons allows to increase the fallow period durations and results in a better multi-seasonal profit. For regular fallow durations, the profit is lower than the optimal solution, but the final soil infestation is also lower.