🎥Faba Bean Yield Quality Analysis — Work Within the PestSpace Project

Why are we analysing these plants?

In PestSpace, we want to understand how crops perform under natural pest and disease pressure. To do this, we used only minimal plant protection products in the field trials. This allows us to observe real fungal pathogens and actual pest activity, rather than conditions altered by heavy chemical protection.

How do we collect the data?

From each experimental plot several plants are collected and 10 plants per plot are selected for detailed assessment. For each plant we record the number of pods and the number of seeds per pod. We also weigh the seeds — an important measure of yield quality, even though it does not appear in the video.

What about pests?

During sample processing we also encounter seed beetles (bruchids), insects that bore small holes into faba bean seeds. Each beetle is collected into an ethanol-filled tube for later identification.

To assess seed damage:

• from each plant we examine 10 seeds,
• giving 100 inspected seeds per sample bag.

The work is detailed and time-consuming, but essential for understanding how faba bean responds to natural biotic stress. A small step in a much larger international effort. These laboratory assessments are only one stage of the wider PestSpace project. Similar sampling and analyses are being carried out in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Finland, where teams follow the same protocols. Together, these datasets allow us to compare how crops, pathogens, and pests behave under different northern European conditions. All collected data contribute to building an international system — including a mobile and web application — that will help farmers, researchers, and advisors quickly identify crop pathogens and pests.
The goal is simple: to make reliable, science-based diagnostics accessible to everyone.

🎥Please check our video for a behind-the-scenes look at PestSpace research in action

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