Extension impact statement by Professor Scott A. Isard, Ph.D.
The Soybean Rust Pest Information Platform for Extension and Education (SBR-PIPE), a well-integrated monitoring and information technology (IT) system which evolved into the integrated pest management Pest Information Platform for Extension and Education (ipmPIPE) and currently is part of Integrated Pest Information Platform for Extension and Education (iPiPE), demonstrated the benefits of sharing pest observations after the 2004 U.S. incursion of the causal pathogen, Phacopsora pachyrhizi (Isard et al., 2006, VanKirk et al., 2011, Isard et al., 2015). This single-pathogen monitoring network, initially funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and subsequently by the United Soybean Board and operated by extension professionals, increased North American soybean producers' profits by hundreds of millions of dollars each year between 2005 and 2009 (Roberts et al., 2006, Dorrance et al., 2007, Giesler and Hershman, 2007, Hershman et al., 2011). This monetary benefit presumably continues to the present. The breath of support for this effort was unprecedented. The soybean rust team received the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Group Honor Award for Excellence (2006), the International IPM Award for Excellence (2011) and the Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences Environment and Natural Resources Institute Innovation Award (2009). Success of the SBR-PIPE and subsequent PIPEs led to my current USDA-funded $7 million iPiPE Cooperative Agricultural Project (CAP). The impacts of the iPiPE during its first year of operation are summarized in the supplementary file "Summary of 2015 iPiPE Outputs and Outcomes" and quantified in detail in the supplementary file "2015 iPiPE Crop-Pest Program Outputs and Outcomes."