Be good to your beneficials

You must be careful in choosing a rotation of insecticides in your greenhouse so as to properly control the pest and eliminate the possibility of resistance. But if you’re incorporating biological control agents (BCA) into production – especially with edible crops – you must be even more diligent when developing your pest rotations, says Mark Brotherton, portfolio leader at SePRO. “The rotation concept is the same, but not every product labeled for an ornamental crop is necessarily labeled for a food crop,” he says.

 

In addition, you’ll need to make sure your integrated pest management (IPM) program is firing on all cylinders, so that “you don’t get into any kind of heavy infestations where it becomes difficult to get your pest populations under control,” Brotherton says.

 

 

Many greenhouses growing edibles rely heavily on BCAs for pollination and to help protect the crop from insect pests. For example, products like SePRO’s Talus and Ornazin would be compatible for fighting unwanted insect pests, while protecting the desirable insects. Brotherton says that insect growth regulators are also generally gentle on beneficials, and most have some food crops they can be applied to. However, Brotherton warns to read the label carefully—as some products differ in compatibility from food crop to food crop. For example, a chemistry that is labeled for  tomatoes may not have cucumbers or other greenhouse edibles on the label.   

 

Carlos Pintos, Houweling’s integrated pest management supervisor, uses Talus as either a fog or a spray on tomato crops in the greenhouses that utilize beneficial wasps. “We know Talus is not affecting our beneficials because that works on only the first instar of the insect, especially in the whitefly,” he says. It may also be possible that you’ll have to alter not just what you’re spraying, but the way you’re spraying, so that you’re not harming the biologicals. “We spray them only over the top of the plant, we don’t spray the entire plant, to protect the wasps,” Pintos adds.

 

Additionally, when considering a rotation that includes beneficials, Pintos recommends first determining your greenhouse’s threshold of pests by scouting vigilantly. “Otherwise, the whitefly will be ramping up faster than the [biological] population, and that’s when the problem comes up. So determination is very important, [as well as] monitoring the spraying over the top of the [tomato] plant,” Pintos says.

 

To make sure you’re using an appropriate chemistry with a specific biological insect, Brotherton recommends you contact your biological supplier to help walk you through which chemistries are compatible with your BCA program. “All the common BCA suppliers have a comprehensive database describing the degree of compatibility between BCAs and commonly used pesticides in our industry. They offer tools that make the information readily available to growers to help them chose the optimal pesticide rotations for their program.”  

 

For more information, visit www.SePRO.com.