Integrated Pest Management - Process

Process

IPM is the intelligent selection and use of pest control actions that will ensure favourable economic, ecological and sociological consequences and is applicable to most agricultural, public health and amenity pest management situations. Reliance on knowledge, experience, observation, and integration of multiple techniques makes IPM a perfect fit for organic farming (sans artificial pesticide application). For large-scale, chemical-based farms (conventional), IPM can reduce human and environmental exposure to hazardous chemicals, and potentially lower overall costs of pesticide application material and labor.

Risk assessment is usually characterized by four issues: 1) characterization and identification of biological control agents, 2) health risks, 3) environmental risks, and 4) efficacy.

1. Proper identification of pest - What is it? Cases of mistaken identity may result in ineffective actions. If plant damage is due to over-watering, it could be mistaken for fungal infection, since many fungal and viral infections arise under moist conditions. This could lead to spray costs, but the plant would be no better off.

2. Learn pest and host life cycle and biology. At the time you see a pest, it may be too late to do much about it except maybe spray with a pesticide. Often, there is another stage of the life cycle that is susceptible to preventative actions. For example, weeds reproducing from last year's seed can be prevented with mulches and pre-emergent herbicide. Also, learning what a pest needs to survive allows you to remove these.

3. Monitor or sample environment for pest population - How many are here? Preventative actions must be taken at the correct time if they are to be effective. For this reason, once the pest is correctly identified, monitoring must begin before it becomes a problem. For example, in school cafeterias where roaches may be expected to appear, sticky traps are set out before school starts. Traps are checked at regular intervals so populations can be monitored and controlled before they get out of hand. Some factors to consider and monitor include: Is the pest present/absent? What is the distribution - all over or only in certain spots? Is the pest population increasing, decreasing or remaining constant? This is done through crop scouting. Monitoring might also include the status of the water source being used for irrigation, which could potentially contaminate an area with water borne diseases or spread pests.

4. Establish action threshold (economic, health or aesthetic) - How many are too many? In some cases, there is a standardized number of pests that can be tolerated. Soybeans are quite tolerant of defoliation, so if there are a few caterpillars in the field and their population is not increasing dramatically, there is not necessarily any action necessary. Conversely, there is a point at which action must be taken to control cost. For the farmer, that point is the one at which the cost of damage by the pest is more than the cost of control. This is an economic threshold. Tolerance of pests varies also by whether or not they are a health hazard (low tolerance) or merely a cosmetic damage (high tolerance in a non-commercial situation).

Different sites may also have varying requirements based on specific areas. White clover may be perfectly acceptable on the sides of a tee box on a golf course, but unacceptable in the fairway where it could cause confusion in the field of play.

5. Use resources to keep up to date on IPM developments. Researchers are always discovering new techniques, and ways to improve old techniques. Keeping up to date gives you the best options available to when using IPM.

6. Choose an appropriate combination of management tactics. For any pest situation, there will be several options to consider. Options include, mechanical or physical control, cultural controls, biological controls and chemical controls. Mechanical or physical controls include picking pests off plants, or using netting or other material to exclude pests such as birds from grapes or rodents from structures. Cultural controls include: keeping an area free of conducive conditions by removing or storing waste properly, removing diseased areas of plants properly, late water floods, sanding, and the use of disease-resistant varieties. Biological controls are numerous. They include: conservation of natural predators or augmentation of natural predators, Sterile insect technique (SIT).

Augmentation, inoculative release and inundative release are different methods of biological control and all affect the target pest in different ways. Augmentative control includes the periodic introduction of naturally occurring predators in sufficient numbers to keep pest damage below economoic damaging levels. They can be either an inundative or inoculative release. Inundative release is where beneficials are collected, mass-reared and periodically released in large numbers into the pest area. . This is used for an immediate reduction in host populations and is generally used in annual crops but is not suitable in the long run. Inoculative release is where only a limited number of the beneficial (helpful) organisms are collected and introduced into a pest area at the start of the season. This is to give long term control as the parasitoid progeny will continue to affect the host populations throughout the season, such as in orchards. Seasonal inoculative release requires the beneficials to be collected, mass-reared and released seasonally into annual crops as to maintain the beneficial population. This is commonly used in greenhouses. In America and other western countries, inundative releases are the predominant program while Asia and the USSR countries have put emphasis on inoculation and occasional introductions.

The SIT is an Area-Wide IPM that introduces sterile male pests into the pest population to act as birth control. The biological controls mentioned above should only be used in extreme cases, because in the introduction of new species, or supplementation of naturally occurring species can have detrimental effect to the ecosystem. Biological controls can be used to stop invasive species or pests, or they can be they route by which new pests are introduced.

Chemical controls would include horticultural oils or the application of pesticides, such as: insecticides and herbicides. A Green Pest Management IPM program would use pesticides derived from plants, such as botanicals, or other naturally occurring materials. When using any type of chemical control make sure that your pesticide applicator certification is up to day, and that your equipment is well maintained to ensure proper application.

7. Evaluate results - How did it work? Evaluation is often one of the most important steps. This is the process to review an IPM program and the results it generated. Asking the following questions is useful: Did actions have the desired effect? Was the pest prevented or managed to farmer satisfaction? Was the method itself satisfactory? Were there any unintended side effects? What can be done in the future for this pest situation? Understanding the effectiveness of the IPM program allows the site manager to make modifications to the IPM plan prior to pests reaching the action threshold and requiring action again.