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Integrated pest management relies primarily on improving sanitary conditions and structural design to deny pest food, water, harborage, and movement, with the judicious use of chemical controls when needed.
Preventative pest control measures are designed to reduce or eliminate the need for reactive treatments, which rely on chemicals that target specific pests. These preventative strategies are typically safer for people, pets and the environment than traditional treatments. They may include sealing entry points for pests, removing conditions that support pest activity and preventing the spread of pests. These can include removing food sources, disposing of garbage regularly, sealing cracks and gaps in walls and foundation, repairing leaky plumbing, installing screens on windows and doors and maintaining good sanitation practices.
A key element of prevention is learning about pests and their habits. Understanding what attracts them, how they move through the environment and what their ideal habitat looks like empowers people to take preventative action. It is also important to know the difference between continuous pests – pests that are constantly present and require regular control – and sporadic pests – pests that are only occasionally or intermittently problematic.
The ability to recognize pest life stages also helps with preventative pest management. Identifying whether a pest is an egg, larva, pupa or adult makes it easier to determine the appropriate control measure. This information can help to prevent the spread of pests by eliminating their roosting or feeding areas or interrupting their reproduction cycle.
Once a pest infestation has been detected, there are several methods to suppress the population and prevent it from building up again to unacceptable levels. Suppression methods can include baiting, spraying and trapping. The choice of method will depend on the type of pest, the level of infestation and what is being threatened.
Some suppression techniques use natural enemies to control pest populations, such as predators, parasites and pathogens. These biological controls are effective for smaller pest invasions and can be used in combination with other control measures. The effectiveness of biological controls is dependent on the presence of the pest’s natural enemies in the area and on the amount of enemy material introduced to the pest.
Other mechanical or physical controls, such as traps, barriers, fences, radiation and even electricity can be effective in controlling pests. These methods are sometimes referred to as non-chemical controls. It is important that these methods are employed by knowledgeable professionals and that they are used correctly to ensure that they are effective and do not cause harm to the environment or people.
Suppression
The goal of pest control is to prevent pests from damaging crops or posing hazards in the environment. This can be achieved through a wide variety of methods and practices. These include mechanical and physical controls, biological control, cultural control, chemical control, and monitoring.
Mechanical or physical controls use devices and structures to prevent the entrance or movement of pests. Examples of these include traps, screens, barriers and fences. Physical controls also include alterations of the environment, such as modifying the amount of water or the availability of sunlight.
Biological control uses living organisms to suppress pest populations. The most common organisms used for this purpose are predators and parasitoids. Predators kill or eat pests, whereas parasitoids lay their eggs in or in the bodies of their host pests. Parasitoid species that are commonly used in pest control in greenhouses and vegetable fields include tachinid flies, braconid wasps and ichneumonid beetles.
Some plant varieties are resistant to particular pests. Using resistant plants, when available, helps to keep pest numbers below harmful levels. The chemical properties of some plants also make them less desirable to pests, which can help reduce their population.
Chemical control involves the direct application of substances to destroy or inhibit pests. These substances can be natural or synthetic. Natural substances include botanicals, microbial agents and biocontrol organisms. Synthetic chemicals can include herbicides, fungicides and insecticides. They are often mixed together to create a compound that is effective against multiple pests or has other benefits.
Many growers and professional pest controllers are concerned that the growing use of chemical products will lead to pesticide resistance. They are seeking ways to decrease the use of chemicals and increase the use of other control measures.
Monitoring is an important part of pest control. It allows the pest control practitioner to react quickly to an outbreak and avoid damage. It also enables them to establish “action thresholds,” or the levels at which pest populations need to be taken under control, for esthetic, health, safety or economic reasons. Threshold levels may be established for a range of pests, from plant diseases to rodents.
Eradication
Pests that have established themselves in an area can be more difficult to eradicate than new pests. Eradication can require a great deal of effort to kill off the population using methods such as trapping, sterile insect release, or use of pheromones. There may also be barriers to reintroduction, such as natural physical barriers or quarantine, that need to be effectively maintained to prevent recolonization.
Groups of people in many countries work hard to suppress introduced predators. This is a vital aspect of pest control, because a landscape that contains more species will be less likely to suffer major outbreaks of invasive predators.
Eradication is a rare goal in outdoor pest situations, because it is typically more effective to focus on prevention and suppression. In closed environments, such as dwellings, schools, offices, or hospitals, eradication can be a more viable goal.
Chemical options are often used in the last resort, when other prevention or suppression methods are unsuccessful. Herbicides are available to kill weeds, insecticides to control insects, and fungicides to manage diseases. However, the potential hazards of these chemicals, which can affect human health and pets as well as the environment, should be carefully considered before making any decisions to use them.
The use of pesticides can lead to the development of resistance in the targeted species. This occurs when the pests ingest or inhale pesticide residue and it becomes harder and more dangerous to kill them with the same amount of spray. Rotating different types of pesticides can help reduce the development of resistance.
A relatively new approach to controlling some pests is the use of “enhanced” or “biological” controls. These are organisms, usually viruses, bacteria, or nematodes, that target and infect the pests to kill them or to cause them disease. The most well known example is Bacillus thuringiensis, which is an ingenious way to kill caterpillars by introducing a toxin that damages the midgut of the larva.
The use of biological controls can be very successful, but it takes time to become established. There is also a lag between the increase in the number of the pest’s enemies and the increase in the population of the pest.
Monitoring
Identifying pests is the first step in any pest control program. Correct identification can help a grower determine basic information such as the pest’s life cycle and the point in the life cycle when it is most susceptible to control measures. It also helps to pinpoint the best time to begin treatments that will be most effective, such as a spray at the bud stage of a tomato plant.
Monitoring can be done with a variety of tools including insect light traps, bug lights and insect pheromone traps that use a manufactured copy of the pheromones that insects release to attract males and discourage mating. Many of these devices can be used in conjunction with visual inspection to provide a complete picture of the pest population levels and the level of damage to crops.
Insect pests are often monitored using a combination of trapping and scouting. Scouting is the practice of regularly searching for pests and assessing them. This can be done by examining the crop for damage or checking each field block or planter box at least once per week in warmer weather and once every other week in winter. Scouting requires a keen eye, knowledge of the crop development stages and an understanding of the phenological patterns of the pest.
Other forms of monitoring can include weed mapping, soil testing and analyzing environmental conditions that can affect the success of certain control methods. Biological controls, such as the introduction of a pest’s natural enemies, can be used to reduce pest populations. This can be a cost effective alternative to chemical pesticides.
Chemical pesticides can be used to control the most difficult or damaging pests, but they also pose concerns for pollution and nontarget effects as well as resistance to these chemicals. Integrated Pest Management (IPM) seeks to reduce dependence on chemical pesticides, but it accepts that there are some pests that cannot be controlled without them.
Many farmers have developed pest-control programs that rely on monitoring, trapping, physical barriers and other nonchemical methods to control pests and prevent them from causing crop damage or contamination. In some situations, a threshold or zero tolerance is applied to prevent the occurrence of a pest in areas such as operating rooms and other sterile environments in health care facilities.