Pest Management involves a series of actions to reduce the impact of unwanted organisms. It starts with defining pest management objectives and monitoring results.
Inspection and monitoring involve identifying and counting pests, estimating their numbers, and checking the damage they cause. They also include examining environmental conditions that promote or support pests, such as food availability, habitat conditions, and soil moisture levels. Contact Armis Pest Management now!
Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is an environmentally friendly, common-sense method of controlling pests that uses non-chemical methods and only resorts to chemical measures when necessary. It also limits the amount of pesticide used to prevent an infestation and keeps pesticide use to acceptable levels. IPM programs promote nature protection and sustainable agriculture in the long run.
IPM starts with monitoring a field, garden, building, landscape or other site for pests and considering their impact on that area. Scouting is an important part of the process to identify the type and number of pests and assess the damage they cause. A treatment strategy is then developed and implemented, taking into account the life cycle of the pest and how the environment impacts its development. This includes considering what natural enemies may be present and what weather conditions are expected to influence pest activity. An action threshold is determined and used to decide if pests are at a level that requires intervention.
Prevention methods reduce the need for pesticides. These include crop rotation, planting pest-resistant varieties and preventing water runoff from fields or other areas that can create moisture problems. Non-chemical controls also include removing food sources and other attractants to the pests, reducing the availability of water or sunlight, and applying physical or biological controls.
An IPM plan also incorporates economic benefits unrelated to the pests. For example, a crop rotation system can save money by reducing fuel and fertilizer costs. And a weatherization program can lower energy bills and help prevent moisture problems that attract pests.
IPM can be implemented in any facility, from homes to offices, hospitals and schools, and it can work for a wide range of pests. It is a process that considers all tools and strategies to determine appropriate pest levels and tolerance thresholds, and then integrates biological, cultural, mechanical and physical and chemical tools in a manner that minimizes health, environmental, economic, and human risks. To implement IPM, a facility must create and maintain an IPM plan, train staff in pest identification and management, and have at least one person trained to apply the chemical controls that might be needed.
Biological Management
Natural enemies such as predators, parasitoids and pathogens can reduce pest populations to levels below economic damage thresholds. This can eliminate the need for broad-spectrum chemical insecticides, which may affect non-target insects and beneficial organisms as well. Biological control methods are based on three principles: only living agents can mediate biological control, a biological control agent must always target a specific pest, and the impact of a biological control agent is limited to the target crop only.
Conservation biological control is the practice of conserving existing natural enemies in production systems. Many growers employ conservation tactics in their field operations, for example releasing beneficial insects (lacewings and lady beetles) to control aphids or planting cover crops or weedy borders to support parasitoid activity.
In classical biological control, researchers collect a natural enemy from its native habitat and introduce it to its new home, where it is expected to establish a sustainable population that will limit the growth of the target pest. This method has been successful in establishing permanent population limits for a number of crop pests, but it is less effective against exotic species and often fails to control established pests, especially native insect pests. Biological control requires significant initial investment to purchase and rear the natural enemy, but once it is established in a new environment it can be very low cost and does not require any further input from humans.
Augmentative biological control involves supplemental releases of natural enemies to achieve pest suppression. For example, large numbers of entomopathogenic nematodes (Trichogramma) are released on a regular basis to control several soil-dwelling insect pests in vegetable and field crops. The use of a natural enemy in this way is also known as inundative release, and the supplemental release can be carried out on a seasonal or periodic basis. The supplemental release of a natural enemy can also be used in conjunction with modification of the cropping system to provide additional shelter or food for the pest, a tactic that is called habitat manipulation.
While there are several important considerations to take into account when implementing biological control, a good program can result in the replacement of chemical pesticides, which can have adverse environmental and human health impacts. However, it is important to remember that biological control only controls pests when it is part of an integrated IPM approach. Other pest management tools include resistance varieties, cultural practices that reduce pest abundance or damage, and methods of manipulating pest mating or host-finding behavior.
Physical Control
Unlike pesticides, which kill the unwanted organisms directly, physical controls interfere with the environment and/or life cycle of the pest. They are most often used to prevent pest populations from reaching damaging levels. Barriers block pests from reaching plants; traps, such as snares for rodents, or netting for fruit trees keep birds and insects away from the crop; and mechanical methods like weeding, hoeing, mowing and cultivation destroy weeds and prevent their seedlings from germinating.
Biological control is the use of natural predators, parasites and disease organisms that ordinarily occur in nature to reduce the population of pests. This approach is effective for many plant pests, and it is usually safer to use than chemical methods. It can also be more cost-effective than chemical controls.
Physical and cultural practices were developed long before chemical controls became available, and they can be extremely useful for managing pests in the field or garden. They may involve changing the environment to make it less suitable for pests, or they may focus on reducing their numbers by concentrating them in small areas where they cannot damage crops. For example, corn borers are more likely to attack the tallest corn plants in a field; planting strips of shorter plants or seeding with a different variety near a row of taller ones can concentrate them and provide effective control.
Eradication is rarely a goal of pest management, and it is often impossible to achieve in outdoor environments where natural forces influence population dynamics. However, it can be a valuable strategy in indoor situations where pests must be controlled for human health and safety reasons, or when an unwanted organism is present on the premises of food processing or retail facilities. Mediterranean fruit fly and gypsy moth eradication programs are examples of this type of effort.
The key to successful pest management is monitoring. Regularly checking a field, garden or landscape to identify which pests are present, how many there are and what damage they have done helps you determine whether the problem is serious enough to warrant action. Accurate identification of the pest is also necessary to select the best control method and time of application.
Chemical Control
Chemical control refers to the use of chemicals such as herbicides (which target weeds), insecticides (which kill insects), and fungicides (which kill fungus). This method may be used when other strategies have failed to reduce pest populations below damaging levels.
The effectiveness of this strategy depends on the knowledge of how to use the chemicals correctly. It is also important to consider how the chemicals will impact other organisms and the environment. Chemicals should only be used when monitoring indicates they are needed and they should be applied according to established guidelines. These guidelines will take into account the type of pest and the crop, and ensure that they are targeted effectively.
When a pesticide is used, it must be carefully sprayed or spread so that it only affects the target organism and not non-target organisms or the environment. It is also important to note that any chemical used should be labeled, and that it must only be used by a licensed pest controller. This is a legal requirement in the UK, and it is also a good idea to get your pest controller to have a level 2 Award in Pest Management.
A number of chemical-based products are available to help with integrated pest management, including biopesticides, microbial alternatives and plant growth regulators. The microbial alternatives include pathogens which kill or debilitate their host, such as bacteria that attack caterpillars by producing toxin in their midgut, like Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). These products can be effective at managing over 400 insect species without harming humans and other livestock.
Other microbial products are bacteriophages, which destroy the microorganisms that cause disease by releasing viral proteins into the cells of the offending microorganism. Biopesticides are also produced from the extracts of plants or their spores, and these can be used to kill weeds, or control diseases on fruit and vegetable crops.
Other integrated pest management techniques include the heating or steaming of soils to kill pathogens and weed seeds. These methods are called mechanical integrated pest management, and they can be extremely effective. They are also much safer for the environment and human health than conventional chemical spraying.