Optimal trap cropping investments to maximize agricultural yield

TL;DR

This paper presents a framework to optimize trap crop proportions in agriculture to maximize yield by balancing pest control and crop production, considering pest movement and attractiveness of trap plants.

Contribution

It introduces a simple, adaptable model for optimizing trap crop investment to improve pest management and crop yield, extending previous approaches with a transparent framework.

Findings

Allocating 5-20% of land to trap crops maximizes yield.

Highly attractive trap plants require less land for effective pest control.

Intermediate attractiveness of trap plants leads to the greatest investment in trap cropping.

Abstract

Trap cropping is a pest management strategy where a grower plants an attractive "trap crop" alongside the primary crop to divert pests away from it. We propose a simple framework for optimizing the proportion of a grower's field or greenhouse allocated to a main crop and a trap crop to maximize agricultural yield. We implement this framework using a model of pest movement governed by trap crop attractiveness, the potential yield threatened by pests, and functional relationships between yield loss and pest density drawn from the literature. Focusing on a simple case in which pests move freely across the field and are attracted to traps solely by their relative attractiveness, we find that allocating 5-20 percent of the landscape to trap plants is typically required to maximize yield and achieve effective pest control in the absence of pesticides. For highly attractive trap plants, growers can devote less space because they are more effective; less attractive plants are ineffective even in large numbers. Intermediate attractiveness warrants the greatest investment in trap cropping. Our framework offers a transparent and tractable approach for exploring trade-offs in pest management and can be extended to incorporate more complex pest behaviors, crop spatial configurations, and economic considerations.