Collection of Pest Management Data to Update the Canadian Horticultural Crop Profiles

The crop profiles are web-based documents that provide crop production and pest management information for a specified crop or crop group. National in scope, they identify gaps in pest management and issues faced by Canadian growers. This information is time-sensitive and crop profiles must be updated regularly to ensure that growers, grower groups, provinces, industries and government agencies have up-to-date information to make strategic decisions. NOTE of CHANGE: Since 2011, this work has been conducted continuously on 3-year cycles, where all 21 horticulture crop profiles were updated once within a 3 year contract. Four consecutive contracts have been awarded to date. This contract is being renewed to conduct the 5th round of updates for the horticulture crop profiles. At this time, we are extending the profile updates to a 4-year cycle (i.e. less frequent), thus the renewed contract is proposed to be set for 4 years instead. This is expected to balance the annual work load, while we increase the number of crops by 5 new additions to account for the 2 new crop profiles issued recently. NEW ASK: The collection of pest management data and grower issues is required to update 23 horticultural crop profiles. Under this four year contract (2023-2027), a total of 85 data packages will be collected for 28 crops across their key growing areas, to enable the update of 5 to 8 profiles/year and the completion of the next round of updates for all horticultural crop profiles.