Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Notes

Introduction to Integrated Pest Management (IPM)

Understanding Integrated Pest Management

• Main Ideas:

  • What is Integrated Pest Management (IPM)?
  • What does IPM do?
  • How can producers use it effectively?
  • How can they stay updated with IPM technology?

• Definition of IPM: A comprehensive system of choosing pest management practices from all available agronomic practices.

  • Includes cultural, biological, mechanical, and chemical techniques.

• Selection Criteria (IPM techniques must be):

  • Effective
  • Environmentally safe
  • Give practical and achievable results
  • Economically profitable

• Agronomic Practice Selection:

  • Know the crop's growth cycle and how pests affect different stages.
  • Recognize and identify the pest.
  • Working knowledge of the pest:
    • What causes the pest to flourish?
    • What control methods exist?
    • How weather influences populations and life cycle stages?
  • Know options to prevent infestation.
  • Select control options if infestation occurs.
  • Keep up with weather forecasts that influence pest activity.
  • Be aware of the latest research on new IPM methods.

• Importance of Prevention: With most agronomic problems, there are few "rescue" programs (except for row crops), emphasizing prevention.

Nonchemical Controls

• Healthy Crop: Good growth competes with weeds and resists insects/diseases.

• Practical Practices to Minimize Chemical Controls:

  • Crop Rotation: Growing a planned sequence of crops in order.
    • Benefit: Changes field environment, making it harder for pests to establish.
  • Correct Planting Date: Choose based on temperature.
    • Ensures crop is most competitive and mature enough to withstand insect attacks.
  • Correct Planting Rate: Creates an environment conducive to crop growth.
    • More competitive against weeds.
  • Clean Certified Seed: Reduces weed introduction.
  • Resistant Varieties: Natural protection from pest invasions.
    • Many new resistant varieties are produced using genetic engineering (biotechnology).
  • Soil Testing: Provides correct nutrients to reduce plant stress and pest susceptibility.

Use of Rescue Measures

• Rescue Measures: Spraying, biological predators, cultivating, and vacuuming.

• Economic Threshold: A principle to decide when to use rescue measures.

  • Scouting determines insect types and crop damage risk.
  • Decisions made on treatment type and timing based on scouting results.
  • Definition: The level at which the potential damage value by a pest exceeds the cost to correct the problem.

Research on New IPM Methods

• Primary Goal: Develop new alternatives to pesticides and integrated tactics.

• Examples of Tactics Under Development:

  • Insect attractants
  • Biopesticides
  • Host plant resistance
  • Cultural practices (altered row spacing, rotation patterns) to reduce weeds
  • Physical barriers (mulches)

• Useful Advances Include:

  • Host Plant Resistance: Developed via traditional breeding and genetic engineering.
    • Transgenic plants producing biopesticides or resisting virus infection (viral coat proteins, enzymes).
  • Pesticide Resistance Management: Understanding how natural and artificial selection lead to pest resistance.
    • Useful in designing IPM systems to limit resistance development.
  • Application Technology: Delivers the minimum pesticide amount for control.
    • Reduces adverse impacts on nontarget organisms.
  • Forecasting Pest Movement: Precisely time control methods.
    • Technologies to improve forecasting of aerial pest movement.

Sources of Latest IPM Information

• Best IPM tactics are constantly changing.

• Researchers discover and develop new methods and strategies.

• Producers/applicators must stay updated on weather and insect forecasts.

• Information Sources:

  • Agricultural chemical dealers
  • Major food processors (encourage IPM methods in contract growers)
  • Private consultants (in at least 38 states)
  • Land grant universities, state extension services, USDA
  • Communications networks (researchers, extension staff, private consultants, producers)
  • Electronic communications networks (fast information movement)
  • World Wide Web (new possibilities)
  • National IPM Network (four regional IPM servers with regional/state information)

Natural Methods of Insect Control

• Main Idea: How to control insects without toxic pesticides.

• Current Situation: Most harmful insects controlled with chemical insecticides.

  • Kill pests but also harm beneficial insects (bees).
  • Countless formulas exist for over one million pest insect species.

• EPA Estimates: 40,000 people treated for pesticide poisoning annually (may be underreported).

  • Ninety percent of American households use pesticides in homes/yards/gardens.
  • US uses about a billion pounds of pesticides per year (100 times more than in the 1930s).
  • Food crop loss to insects is almost twice as great as 40-50 years ago.

• Problems with Chemical Pesticides:

  • Destruction of natural predators.
  • Increased pest resistance.
  • Contamination of food crops, water supply, fish, wildlife, and humans.

Types of Natural Controls

• Reduce the need for chemical controls by working with nature.

• Methods:

  • Encouraging or introducing natural enemies (predators)
  • Using nontoxic biologically produced pesticides
  • Using nontoxic insecticides based on "mechanical" control
  • Developing/using insect-resistant crop varieties

• Natural Insect Enemies (Three General Groups):

  • Predators
  • Parasitic insects (parasitoids)
  • Insect pathogens

• Parasites:

  • Example: Wasps laying eggs inside aphids.
  • Immature wasps develop on/inside hosts, killing them as they mature.
  • Adult wasps emerge and repeat the cycle.

• Predators:

  • Consume many prey during their lifetime.
  • Example: Ladybugs (lady beetles)
  • Some stink bugs are predatory; nymphs and adults feed on caterpillars, beetle larvae, and other insects.
  • Predators of Colorado potato beetle larvae.

• Pathogens:

  • Nematodes, bacteria, viruses, fungi, and protozoa that may kill hosts.

• Using Natural Enemies (Three Methods):

  • Introducing exotic natural enemies
    • To permanently control native or introduced pests.
  • Conservation method: Modify the environment to favor natural enemy growth.
  • Periodically releasing natural enemies (augmentation method).

• Conservation Method Importance:

  • Practical and easiest for farmers.
  • Reduce the rate/frequency of pesticide applications.
  • IPM methods include scouting to determine pests and predators, informing chemical use.
  • Applying the "economic threshold" approach.

Insect Resistant Crops

• Promising way to reduce chemical applications.

• Examples:

  • Cotton (developed by Monsanto and released in 1996)
  • Insect-resistant corn

• Resistance from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), a natural soil bacterium.

  • Bt protein incorporated into plants controls caterpillars (cotton bollworm, tobacco budworm, pink bollworm).

Nontoxic Insecticides

• Biological pesticides used by gardeners (e.g., Bacillus thuringiensis).

  • Kills specific insects, harmless to humans.
  • Genetic engineers use Bt protein to develop resistant crops.

• Nipcon: Patented and registered in the US and Canada, meets USDA and EPA criteria.

  • Not a typical insecticide.
  • Uses: Industrial buildings, warehouses, stores, homes, schools, hospitals, and food handling establishments.
  • No warnings required for children or pets.

• Nipcon effectively controls:

  • leafhoppers
  • houseflies
  • mites
  • silverfish
  • beetles
  • ants
  • crickets
  • trips
  • fleas
  • box elder bugs
  • aphids
  • leafroller
  • cockroaches

• Nipcon advantage: 13 chemical agents needed to eradicate the same insect list.

• Also nontoxic and biodegradable.

• Nipcon Formulation:

  • Diatomaceous Earth - 88.0\%
  • Ethomeen - 10.0\%
  • Pyrethrum - 0.2\%
  • Inert Ingredients - 0.8\%
  • Technical Piperonyl Butoxide - 1.0\%

• Diatomaceous Earth: Dead one-cell organisms from ocean/lake floors.

  • Diatom skeletons appear sharp with multiedged spears under a microscope.
  • Punctures insect's waxy coat, causing dehydration (desiccation).
  • Bees have a mechanism protecting them from d.e.

• Pyrethrum: Extract from chrysanthemums.

  • Causes rapid death or paralysis.

• Technical Piperonyl Butoxide: From pepper plants.

  • Prolongs pyrethrum's life.

• Ethomeen: From animal fats.

  • Unlocks d.e. and pyrethrum's killing powers.

• Insects avoid d.e. spears.

• Nipcon: Natural, safe for humans and animals.

Merits of Mechanical Weed Control

• Main Idea: Leverage mechanical weed control to reduce or eliminate chemical weed killers.

• Challenge: Weed control is difficult for producers aiming to reduce input costs and pesticide contamination.

• Abandoned fields quickly become overtaken by weeds.

• Weeds are highly competitive and cannot be ignored.

• Weeds can develop resistance to chemical controls with overuse.

• Weed Control Practices (Four Categories):

  • Cultural practices: Crop rotation, timed field operations.
  • Careful selection of crop varieties (quick emergence, high tolerance, early canopy).
  • Consider cropping system, weed species, weather, and costs.
  • Biological control: Cover crops.
  • Uses allelopathic effects (chemical effect of one plant on another).
  • Chemical weed controls: Preemergence and post-emergence herbicides.
  • Mechanical controls: Cultivation methods, hand pulling.
  • Rotary hoe is relatively low-cost.

Mechanical Weed Control

• Dates back to the dawn of agriculture, still used widely.

• Often combined with chemical control.

• Comparison:

  • Mechanical cultivation is more labor-intensive than chemical treatments.
  • Chemicals require purchased inputs but reduce labor.
  • Environmental impact and health risks of herbicides are a concern.

• Tradeoffs: Weed control choices must balance environmental contamination, labor, time, health hazards, soil erosion, effectiveness, economics, herbicide carryover, and equipment needs.

Reducing Herbicides

• Farmers often choose to reduce herbicide amounts rather than eliminate them entirely.

• Methods: Lower rates or banding herbicides (in-row) with cultivation (between rows).

• Producer Concerns: Reduced yield if weeds are not sufficiently controlled.

• Additional Factors:

  • Labor: Must be available when cultivation is needed.
  • Field management: Accurate weed identification, weather monitoring, and timely cultivation are critical.
  • Weed control: Control may not be adequate for all situations with reduced rates.
  • Full rates may be needed for weeds like shattercane, wild proso millet, woolly cupgrass, and quack grass.
  • Cloddy soil surfaces or crop debris may hinder lower herbicide rates and cultivation.
  • Application rates: Manufacturers have no liability for below-specification applications.
  • Success depends on timely cultivation.

• Reduce application rates are not recommended if timely cultivation cannot be assured or if there is a problem with hard-to-control weeds.

Managing Cultivation

• Sustainable approaches require more labor and management.

• Concern about herbicides in groundwater increases interest in mechanical weed control.

• Herbicide-resistant weeds (lambsquarter, red-root pigweed) may require cultivation.

• Likely solution: Alternate cultivation with chemical controls.

• Effective mechanical weed control requires knowledge of weed identification and growth characteristics.

• Rotary hoeing is most effective when weeds are in the white hair stage (germination to emergence).

• Works on all plants, thinning crop stands (may need increased planting rates).

• Shallow disturbance breaks soil crusts and aids crop emergence and water influence.

• Hot, dry weather improves cultivation success.

• Additional hoeing operations are typically performed seven to ten days later.

• A third hoeing can be done if weed pressure is heavy or crop growth slow.

• Limited information indicates that plants in excess of four to five inches may be permanently damaged.

• Final mechanical weed control is cultivation with specialized equipment for in-row weeds.

• Hilling mechanisms can be added to conventional field cultivators.