TRADITIONAL PEST CONTROL METHODS

Traditional pest control methods involve the suppression of pests and insect through the use of locally available resources in a given cultural setting. The traditional pest control methods do not utilize conventional methods such as the use of insecticides and pesticides. With slight change in the environment or habitat of a given pest, one can achieve a proven method of effective pest control. These modifications of the environment and habitat are commonly referred to as cultural control practices. They most often involve the change of standard horticultural or animal husbandry practices. As these methods often alter the interactions between a pest population and its natural environment, they are also known, less commonly, as ecological control methods. These methods feature simplicity of use and less costly. Unfortunately, there are still a wide variety of insect pests that cannot be suppressed by cultural methods alone. In a traditional agriculture system, common cultural controls would be tillage, strategic planting dates or crop rotation all practices that in some way interrupt an insect pest’s life cycle. A few of the old cultural controls can be rolled over to greenhouse production, of course, but a different setting requires that greenhouse producers rethink the way that they approach cultural controls.

CROP ROTATION

This is one of the oldest and most effective cultural control methods. The growth of a single crop in a field in several seasons gives room for the establishment of pests with devastating effects. With the rotation of the crops in such a field, the cycle of these pests can be broken as these pests can’t adapt to a different host plant thus getting starved. Farmers can reduce populations of wireworms and rootworms in corn fields by rotating the fields with crops such as oats, wheat, or legumes. Similarly, the clover root curculio that feeds exclusively on legumes can be eliminated by switching from clover or alfalfa to corn or small grains. Controlling pests in pasture lands has also been successfully controlled by the crop rotation methods. Texas cattle fever, a protozoan disease transmitted by cattle ticks has been eliminated from the southern United States as a result of pasture rotation designed to protect beef and dairy herds from tick infestation.

The main principle behind the success of crop rotation method in the control of pests is based on the increase in the diversity of a pest’s environment and in the creation of discontinuity in the pest’s food supply chain. Crop rotations are most practical and effective when used against pests that:
i. attack annual or biennial crops
ii. have a relatively narrow host range
iii. cannot move easily from one field to another, and
iv. are present before the crop is planted

INTERCROPPING/MIXED CROPPING

This pest control method reduces and controls for pests in a similar manner to crop rotation by increasing environmental diversity. This method makes the environment less attractive to pests by the mixing of host and non-host plants in a single field in a single planting. Intercropping can also lead to the segregation of the pest in a localized portion within a field which provides for easier management of the pest even with other methods.

Strips of alfalfa, for example, are sometimes inter-planted with cotton as a trap crop for lygus bugs.The alfalfa, which attracts lygus bugs more strongly than cotton, is usually treated with an insecticide to kill the bugs before they move into adjacent fields of cotton. The altering of the planting season in some crops can create a discontinuity in the pest’s food supply. This method is commonly known as phenological asynchrony. This strategy makes farmers to manage their crop in a manner that makes these crops unavailable to pest populations. Sweet corn, for example, can escape most injury from corn earworms if it is planted in early spring and harvested before larvae mature.

SANITATION

This involves the removal of debris from a field. For example, it’s been seen that the removal of crop debris from cotton fields after harvest effectively controls overwintering populations of pink bollworms European corn borers, and sugarcane borers. The sanitation of dropped fruit from below an apple tree ground minimizes drastically the numbers of apple maggots, codling moths, and plum curculio in the next season. Shredding or burning the pruning wood from a peach orchard eliminates several pests. To eliminate shelter and/or overwintering sites for pest populations, clean cultivation is often recommended.

The tilling/plowing of a corn field before winter may disrupt a pest’s life cycle by causing mechanical injury, by increasing exposure to lethal cold temperatures, by intensifying predation by birds or small mammals, or by burying the pests deep beneath the soil surface. Populations of corn earworms and European corn borers have been greatly reduced in recent years by community-wide efforts to plow under corn stubble after harvest. Even with the success associated with sanitation in corn and cotton, sanitation has its own drawbacks. Ground cover or crop debris shelters natural enemies that are important members of the agro ecosystem. Thus, disrupting this environment also leads to the destruction of these beneficial micro-organisms.

In conclusion, cultural methods are based on below principles:
i) Making the crop or habitat unacceptable to pests by interfering with their immediate surroundings, preferences, host plant discrimination or location by both adults and immature.
ii) Make the crop unavailable to the pest in space and time by utilizing knowledge of the pest’s life history, especially its dispersal and overwintering habits.
iii) Reduce pest survival on the crop by enhancing its natural enemies, or by altering the crop’s susceptibility to the pest.

Source : http://permaculturenews.org/