Wheat is one of the most important arable crops grown worldwide, providing a significant proportion of the daily calorific intake for countries across the globe. Wheat crops are attacked by a diverse range of herbivorous invertebrates, pests, that cause significant yield loss. It is anticipated that yield loss caused by pests will increase in response to a changing climate. Currently, these pests are primarily controlled using pesticides; however, there is an increased need for more sustainable pest management solutions. Economic thresholds represent one avenue that can support the sustainable management of pests. Briefly, thresholds are the number of pests above which there is sufficient risk of yield loss. Here, we review the economic thresholds and prediction methods available for sustainable pest management in wheat. We focus on five economically damaging pests affecting wheat crops in the UK and Europe. For each, we highlight the key period of crop risk to pest attack, identify economic thresholds, and provide an overview of current decision support models that can help estimate crop risk and advise sustainable pest management; we end by proposing areas for future improvement for each pest. Furthermore, we take a novel approach by discussing economic thresholds and their applications to sustainable pest management within the context of crop physiology and the capacity for crops to tolerate pest damage, a consideration that is often overlooked when developing pest management strategies. We use the stem-boring pest, the gout fly, as a case study and use the economic injury level equation to conduct a theoretical assessment of the appropriateness of the current gout fly threshold. This theoretical assessment indicates that wheat crops can tolerate greater gout fly damage than currently considered, and shows that by incorporating crop physiology into sustainable pest tolerance schemes we can work towards developing more appropriate physiological-based pest thresholds.

小麦是全球最重要的耕作作物之一，为全球各国提供了每日热量摄入的很大一部分。小麦作物受到多种草食性无脊椎动物和害虫的侵袭，导致产量严重损失。预计由于气候变化，害虫造成的产量损失将会增加。目前，这些害虫主要通过农药来控制；然而，人们越来越需要更可持续的害虫管理解决方案。经济阈值是支持害虫可持续管理的一种途径。简而言之，阈值是指害虫的数量，超过该数量就有足够的产量损失风险。在这里，我们回顾了小麦病虫害可持续管理的经济阈值和预测方法。我们重点关注影响英国和欧洲小麦作物的五种经济破坏性害虫。对于每一个，我们都强调了作物遭受害虫侵袭的风险的关键时期，确定了经济阈值，并概述了当前的决策支持模型，这些模型可以帮助估计作物风险并为可持续害虫管理提供建议；最后，我们针对每种害虫提出了未来改进的领域。此外，我们采取了一种新颖的方法，在作物生理学和作物耐受害虫损害的能力的背景下讨论经济阈值及其在可持续害虫管理中的应用，这是制定害虫管理策略时经常被忽视的考虑因素。我们以蛀茎害虫痛风蝇作为案例研究，利用经济损害水平方程对当前痛风蝇阈值的适宜性进行理论评估。这一理论评估表明，小麦作物可以承受比目前认为的更大的痛风蝇损害，并表明，通过将作物生理学纳入可持续的害虫耐受计划，我们可以努力开发更合适的基于生理的害虫阈值。