Dr. Itai Opatovsky, Agricultural Research and Development Stations of Israel, Southern Branch, Besor Desert (Northern Negev desert)

Dr. Opatovsky is an expert in applied agro-ecology with a strong academic background in ecology and vast hands-on experience in intensive irrigated farming. He is interested in developing integrated pest management practices ready-to-be -adopted on a commercial agricultural scale. His main interest is increasing the natural enemies’ efficiency and abundance in the commercial field. This to be done by manipulating the habitat using supply of additional food resources, changing the habitat structure and developing specialized agro-techniques.

Dr.Opatovsky specializes in conducting experiments at the field scale and can provide additional insight on the trophic web dynamics using molecular gut content analysis.

Agricultural Research and Development Stations of Israel is located in one of the main areas of intensive agriculture in Israel, also known as the ‘crop barn’ of Israel. This station is an excellent site for semi-arid intensive agriculture research.

The facility contains 7 hectares of green-houses, 85 hectares of open field and 5 hectares of orchards and is fully equipped with the necessary infrastructure for running successful manipulated experiments on a semi-commercial scale.

Dr. Opatovsky seeks to take part in research studies related to functional biodiversity and can contribute for the study of arthropod’s trophic web interactions and their agro-ecosystems function as bio-control agents.

Contact details:

Itai Opatovsky, PhD

Cellular phone 054-4659454