Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Photo 13.1.
Adult thrip covered with
Verticillium lecanii
hyphae.
The use of
Encarsia formosa
, for the control
of white fly (
Trialeurodes
), as well as the use
of
Phytoseiulus persimilis
for the red spider
mite, are widespread in protected cultiva-
tion all over the world (Parrella, 1999). In
Spain, the most common control for white
fly is
Eretmocerus mundus
(J.V.D. Blom,
2007, personal communication).
FAO (Hanafi, 2003) can be found, highlight-
ing the relevance of cultural practices and
management in integrated control.
IPM is based on fixing the 'economic
damage thresholds' of pests and diseases for
each crop, which define the population
density of a pest above which economic
losses occur (Moreno, 1994; Bielza, 2000).
The IPM strategy is established with the aim
of maintaining the populations below the
economic damage threshold.
Among cultural practices of interest in
IPM we may highlight: (i) the use of healthy
seed; (ii) the quality of the substrate;
(iii) planting density; (iv) the type of pruning
and training, grafting and soil management
practices (especially solarization; Katan,
1981); and (v) greenhouse climate control
(Garijo and Frapolli, 1994; Bielza, 2000). The
use of methyl bromide in the suppression of
soil-borne diseases has been prohibited due to
its effect on the ozone layer, so its use has
been substituted by solarization, when enough
solar radiation is available, as is the case in
the Mediterranean Basin. The irrigation and
fertilization schedule greatly affects the
development of pests and the elimination of
weeds contributes to the efficacy of IPM.
The development of resistant or tolerant
cultivars to certain viruses, insects, fungi or
13.4
Integrated Pest Management
Integrated pest management (IPM) is a dif-
ferent approach to the control of pests and
diseases, which tolerates the presence of
pests and diseases at a low level of incidence
that does not cause economic losses, and
gives preference to other types of control
(biological, genetic, cultural) over chemical
control, which is only used as a last resort.
All this allows for a notable decrease in the
intensity of the phytosanitary treatments.
The integration of several types of con-
trol in a common strategy, considering eco-
nomic, ecologic and toxicological criteria,
forms the basis of the integrated manage-
ment (Moreno, 1994).
In the literature, the acronym IPM and
more recently the acronym IPP (integrated
