Pest and Disease management Flashcards
What is scouting?
Scouting is a systematic random survey used in initial IPM steps. It may focus on high risk areas such as edges, and looks at common threats and biosecurity threats each season.
What are some biologically based controls?
- Ladybirds to eat aphids and scale
- relying on order of nature
- Biological control agents
- Plant pathology
- Weed control
What is a pest?
A pest is any unwanted organism (human-centric)
=> 0.1% of insects are pests, 8% of funghi
Why do we get pests?
- Farming practices
- Crops grown outside of their range
- Changes in climate, soil moisture.
- Changes in ecology
- Chemical use
what are the main types of pest control?
- Cultural
- Chemical
- Biological
- Host resistance (GMO and breeding)
- IPM
What is cultural control?
Cultural control describes how and when to plant a crop, how to cultivate and manage life cycle event timings to avoid pests.
What are some examples of cultural control?
- flooding for weed control
- spacing of planting for weed control.
- Burning for diseased crop residue.
- Time of planting to avoid insect population booms.
Pros and cons of cultural control?
Pros:
- Low tech
- Pre-planning rather than reactive
- No chemical use
- adapting existing practises.
Cultural about preventing events before they begin, chemical may be better for dealing with events as they pop up.
Cons:
- Often labour-intensive
- Not rapid and responsive to new pests
- Not pest-proof
- Env. costs of e.g. tillage and burning
Systemic vs non-systemic pesticides?
- Non-systemic: sits on leaf surface: acts as a contact pesticide.
=> move into the crop, more residues in food, bad for bees. - Systemic: taken up by the plant
=> wash off with little residue in food.
Pros and cons of chemical control?
Pros:
- often v. effective
- economical
- Rapid and adaptable
- Reliable in emergency: one treatment for all occasions
- Can be used to retrospectively treat unforeseen events.
Cons:
- residues in food and environment
- Bioaccumulation and biomagnification
- Resistance of pests
- Secondary outbreaks
- toxicity risk
- effects (inc. sub-lethal) on beneficial organisms.
- requires regulation
What is IPM?
IPM is a decision-based strategy that identifies and
reduces risk from pests and pest management
strategies by managing pest populations to
acceptable levels using a range of complementary
tools and control techniques.
Preventative strategy- control measures used only if
prevention fails
What does holistic IPM strive for?
- long term maintenance of natural resources and
agricultural productivity, - minimal adverse impact on the environment,
- guarantees adequate economic returns to farmers,
- optimises crop production with minimal chemical
inputs, - satisfies human need for food and income
- provides for the social needs of farm families and
communities.
IPM requires a change in thinking!
• There will always be some pests in the crop
you just need to maintain them at an
equilibrium
• There is no such thing as a quick fix or magic
bullet!
• IPM programs can take several years to fully
establish
What are the five steps of IPM?
- Scouting
- Thresholds
- Reduced risk pesticides
- Prevention
- biologically-based controls
Moving from chemically intensive to biointensive
- Scouting
- To assess risks and outcomes of previous mgmt strategies - Thresholds
- To determine when to take action - Reduced risk pesticides
- To reduce the risks of pests + pest mgmt
- Reduce costs of taking action - Prevention
- reduce need for chemical control + anticipate events - biologically-based controls
- reduce pesticide use + enhance health of beneficial insect populations.
What are thresholds?
Thresholds help farmers understand when to take action.
- May be based of insect pop. numbers, weather, etc
- What limit of damage you’re willing to accept (connection to supermarkets driving unrealistic expectations).
- If cost of damage exceeds cost of control, you should act.
What is indirect damage?
Indirect damage is damage that doesn’t affect the saleable part of the plant.
