IPM Management
Koppert Cress reduced pesticide costs 11% and minimized outbreak damage with proactive IPM.
Sera’s reasoning layer correlated climate conditions, trap data, scouting logs, and crop protocols to forecast pest pressure, explain escalation drivers, and guide precise, early interventions—transforming reactive spraying into preventive, low-residue control without compromising productivity.
Customer
Koppert Cress
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The challenge before Sera
Pest management in intensive greenhouse production demands early detection and targeted action—but Koppert Cress dealt with:
Unpredictable pest activity: Delays in spotting build-ups led to larger outbreaks requiring heavy interventions.
Over-reliance on reactive pesticides: Large-scale outbreaks increased costs, crop stress, residue risks, and potential resistance buildup.
Climate-pest blind spots: Teams lacked integrated insight into how temperature, RH, VPD, or ventilation windows favored proliferation (e.g., warm nights accelerating whitefly/thrips reproduction)—making forecasts manual and inconsistent.
No unified view: Manual data piecing hid trends, delaying decisions and allowing damage to accumulate before response.
How Sera helps
Sera deployed as the intelligence layer above climate systems, sensors, trap/scouting data, and Koppert Cress’s IPM protocols/SOPs. It continuously reasoned over environmental favorability, population dynamics, and biological control windows to:
Forecast pressure proactively: Identify high-risk periods based on climate (e.g., "Night temps 21–23 °C + RH >80% for 6+ h—optimal for whitefly reproduction; risk escalation in 5–7 days").
Explain drivers in plain English: "Thrips counts up 3× this week—correlated to VPD spikes >1.6 kPa midday (dispersal window) and low beneficial establishment."
Recommend early, precise actions via assistant: Ask "Should we release Amblyseius now?" or "Why rising pressure in Zone 3?" → get protocol-aligned suggestions (e.g., "Release at 10/m² + Orius at 0.5/m² per your bio-first rule; scout in 72 h").
Enable targeted interventions: Shift from broad sprays to preventive biologicals or spot treatments—reducing severity before outbreaks peak.
Enforce consistency: Knowledge Base activated their thresholds, release guidelines, rotation rules, and site-specific notes so every insight and recommendation stayed tailored and repeatable across teams/shifts.
No major hardware additions—just better cause-effect reasoning and knowledge activation over existing data to enable proactive IPM.
"SERA Manager has changed the way we approach IPM. Instead of manually piecing together data, we can now see the complete picture and make decisions based on real-time and historical trends."
— Barnabas Berecz, Head Grower at Koppert Cress
The results
11% reduction in pesticide costs—through more efficient, targeted applications and fewer large-scale interventions.
Minimized outbreak sizes—Early forecasting and precise timing reduced pest spread, crop damage, and productivity losses.
Decreased overall pesticide use—Promoted healthier crops, lower residues, and more sustainable practices while maintaining control.
Why it matters
Effective IPM isn’t about reacting to visible damage—it’s about anticipating pressure from climate-pest interactions and intervening minimally but precisely. Sera turns fragmented monitoring into proactive intelligence: climate-aware forecasting, natural-language explanations, protocol-enforced recommendations, and automated alerts/workflows that leave dashboards behind. This case shows how Sera’s reasoning layer and knowledge base deliver cost savings, reduced chemical reliance, and sustained productivity—making IPM preventive, consistent, and scalable even in high-pressure environments.
