This article assesses the multi-actor co-innovation research that was carried out between 2010 and 2018 by researchers and apple production actors. The aim was to develop sustainable integrated pest management methods that, with the help of an agroecological whole system approach, would be both desirable and feasible to implement in practice. Whilst a novel pest management strategy based on semiochemicals arrived at and was rapidly adopted by growers, the enhancement of biological control through functional diversity required long-term learning. This is explained by substantial differences in the perception of the economic risk and the necessary knowledge behind the adoption of each method. The knowledge gap due to the reduced number of extension advisors and the conflict between the cost incurred when implementing low-impact pest control methods and reduced profitability of apple crops were pointed out as major contradictions by the actors. We suggest that strengthened regional agroecological infrastructure support along with the expansion of public advisory service personnel would reduce the farmer economic risk and share the responsibility for a safer environment and healthier food. Similarly, relevant authorities should be provided with resources to allow for safety assessments of candidate low-risk plant protection products at the regional scale. As a conclusion, we recognised that in our region sustainable agroecosystem management through feasible and desirable plant protection strategies could not be developed solely by focussing on the efficiency of the tools because the costeffectiveness and thus the implementation of such tools depended greatly on the simultaneous coinnovation of the socio-technical system. Local stakeholders need to harmonise their vision and standpoints to engender long term socially and environmentally sound objectives providing a base to promote, finance and extensively adopt innovative plant protection strategies within the Skåne region.

Introduction

Food production is facing a number of challenges arising from global changes to the environment and society (Ripple et al., 2017). Awareness upon environmental degradation and the health hazards caused by agricultural intensification over the last six decades necessitates new food production systems (Tittonell, 2014). The European Union (EU) Directive 2009/128/EC and Regulation 1107/ 2009/EC supports the implementation of sustainable standards such as Integrated Pest Management (IPM). IPM is an ecosystembased interdisciplinary strategy, which emphasises pest management measures with the least negative effect upon human health, non-target organisms and the environment whilst still providing satisfactory control. The EU requires that all member states base their National Action Plans on eight IPM principles to be followed by all professional pesticide users (Barzman et al., 2015). The principles are often visualised in a pyramid where the preferred methods are emphasised by being placed at the base of the triangle occupying * Corresponding author. the largest area. Preventive measures are prioritised and can be considered as the creation of cropping systems less likely to experience significant economic losses due to the presence of pests. When measures such as landscape and habitat management, host plant resistance and cultural practices fail, direct control interventions are used. Direct control measures also vary in the level of negative side effects depending on their mode of action, persistence, toxicity and timing. Finally, control measures can increase in efficiency and decrease their non-target effects with the help of resistance management, monitoring (emphasis on pests and diseases), forecasting models and threshold values. The final principle states the need to learn about the effect of the selected and documented control methods by evaluating the results.