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Biological Control of Greenhouse Pests
By admin | July 25, 2007
I have decided to put together a biological control program for some of our young plants this year. I was fortunate enough to gain experience using biological controls at a previous job and I feel very comfortable using them. I haven’t started a biological control program yet because the timing and conditions haven’t been right. However, this year we will produce a large crop of dracaena spikes and I will be able to contain the entire crop in one enclosed house. This presents me with the perfect opportunity to use beneficial insects to control the major pests of dracaena. As anyone who has grown dracaena knows, thrips and spidermites are both major problems and thrips can be especially difficult to control. My biggest concern is controlling the thrips population during the fall and winter when they are normally close to nonexistent in the greenhouse. Because dracaena is an excellent host for thrips and chemical resistance is a very real problem with this pest, it would be an ideal solution if I could control the population with a biological control. That way I wouldn’t need to constantly apply the same chemicals and therefore expose the thrips population to the active ingredients of the chemicals in our rotation. We always use a good rotation of three different chemicals with three different modes of action, so we are using responsible chemical control, but we still cannot achieve excellent control this time of year. I have decided to use the Orius system from Biobest as our biological control. The orius are a 
predatory insect that feeds on all life stages of thrips. I have used them in the past and I feel strongly that they will provide excellent control. Biological control is a part of our industry that needs to become more prevalent because eventually our customers will demand it and our “toolbox” of available chemicals will become more and more limited. I will post updates on our Biological Program as we get it going.
Topics: IPM, Day to day |
July 28th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
Good information!
It would be easier to ‘digest’ and scan if you break it down in smaller paragraphs and put a 2 or 3 sentence summary at the top of your post.
The way you have it now is intimidating and overwhelming to look at.
July 28th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
That’s great feedback! I’m thinking about having just the first few sentences of each post visible and with a link to the complete post on another page. I think this would solve some of what you are talking about.
Thanks again.
July 29th, 2007 at 10:51 am
Have you tried or can you tell me about using nematodes as a thrip control measure with Poinsettias?
July 30th, 2007 at 8:09 am
I was reading your posting about Dracaena and noticed you mentioned you normally use a three chemical rotation for Thrips control, using three modes of action.
Could you please tell me what these three chemicals/modes are? Anything I can add to my arsenal is always welcome. We may already be using them but I thought it couldn’t hurt to check.
July 30th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
Martyn,
I sent you an email this weekend with my preferred chemical rotation. At least I think I did. I’ll check my sent items folder and look for it. In the meantime check your inbox. If I can’t find it or I didn’t send it, I’ll send a new one.
Thanks
August 14th, 2007 at 7:57 pm
[…] Below are pictures I took on the day we released them. I hope they’re hungry. Click here to see my other post about Biological […]
August 15th, 2007 at 2:55 am
It would be helpful to international readers if the biological control agent and chemical active ingredients were included in the script as we are not familiar with your brand names in England.
In reply to one of the comments, nematodes are being used in England for routine thrip control as a spray onto chrysanthemum crops where they have run out of active ingredients to which the pests are not resistant in this case for thrips palmii
August 15th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
Richard,
Thanks for the comments.
I will try to include (in parenthesis) the active ingredient of the chemicals and the scientific names of the biologicals that I write about.
Where do you purchase the nematodes for thrips control?