Pests are organisms that cause losses by interfering with production, spoiling products, and contaminating foodstuffs. The purpose of pest control is to diminish these losses.
Pests are opportunistic and will invade any environment where food, water, or shelter is available. Natural forces like climate, natural enemies, barriers, and overwintering sites affect pest populations. Contact Pest Control Meridian ID now!
Prevention is the first step in pest control and focuses on reducing the likelihood of an infestation. It involves eliminating food, water, and shelter sources for pests, keeping garbage receptacles closed and picked up regularly, and sealing off entrance points that might allow pests to enter buildings. It also includes maintaining landscaping that doesn’t provide hiding or breeding places for pests and instituting cleaning practices that eliminate pest attractants. Finally, it includes clearly communicating pest prevention strategies and training employees to follow these guidelines.
Many pests need water to survive and thrive, so removing sources of water will often help reduce their populations. For example, storing beverages in sealed containers or running the faucet before pouring can greatly reduce the number of ants attracted to the milk in an open jug. In addition, repairing leaks and preventing overflows of water can make areas less attractive to some pests.
Agricultural pests are typically controlled by destroying the plants they damage or removing the plant products they consume. In this way, they can be compared to weeds that compete with crops for resources or parasites that spread disease to plants and animals. Biological controls such as predators, pathogens, and pheromones can be used to regulate pest populations without harming humans or the environment.
Chemical pesticides are frequently used in conjunction with other methods to suppress pests or prevent them from spreading. Generally, they are applied to specific sites and used in a manner that minimizes exposure to people, pets, and livestock. Generally, the use of pesticides should be limited to situations in which preventive measures fail.
Threshold levels — the level of pest presence beyond which action is considered necessary — have been established for many pests. These thresholds are based on esthetic, health, or economic considerations and have been determined for crops, animals, and plants that are of medical importance to people. They are also based on the level of injury or damage that can be caused by a particular pest and can vary widely from one situation to another.
Suppression
Suppression is the effort to reduce pests to low levels so that their damage to crops or to human health is minimized. This is accomplished by monitoring pest population levels and establishing economic thresholds for a given crop or site that can be used to guide management actions. A variety of strategies are available for pest suppression, including chemical insecticides, physical barriers, cultural practices and biological control agents.
The use of transgenic crops expressing Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) genes to provide natural plant defenses against insects has the potential to reduce pesticide usage, promote biocontrol services, and economically benefit vegetable growers. The results of surveys and scouting programs should be incorporated into suppression activities to ensure that pests are monitored correctly, so that the level of pesticide treatment is appropriate. To reduce the risk of chemical movement from a field to surface water, a vegetative buffer should be included around fields or sites that will receive Bt treatments.
Sanitation practices help prevent and suppress many pests by eliminating sources of food and shelter, and by reducing the chance of pest spread from one area to another. These include using pest-free seeds and transplants, weeding between crop rows, properly cleaning tillage and harvest equipment between fields or operations, and avoiding transfer of pests to non-crop areas by preventing them from escaping a field.
Biological control uses natural enemies, such as parasitoids, predators, pathogens, and competitors to reduce pest populations. It is a more environmentally sound, economical, and sustainable method of controlling pests than conventional chemical methods. Biological control also may involve introducing and increasing the abundance of a pest’s enemies in a target region, or altering an enemy’s characteristics to make it more effective. Examples of this type of control include releasing large numbers of sterile males that cannot reproduce, or introducing hormones to disrupt normal mating behavior such as juvenile hormones or pheromones.
The flow and stability of natural pest control services depend on landscape scale factors such as crop rotation, tillage, and the presence of non-crop habitat. These factors should be considered when designing landscape-scale conservation systems to reduce dependence on pesticides and foster yield stability.
Eradication
The objective of eradication is to eliminate a pest from an area. It is a rare goal in outdoor pest situations, but is often the aim of control programmes for Mediterranean fruit fly, gypsy moth and fire ant. Eradication is also a common goal of control programmes in enclosed environments such as schools, health care facilities and food processing plants.
NPPOs should ensure that they have information about all stages of a pest’s life cycle, including natural, biological and chemical controls, when considering eradication. They should also ensure that they can select the best biological, chemical, or combination treatment option. They should also consider any climatic effects and the effect that different control options have at different parts of a pest’s life cycle.
Before eradication can be initiated, surveillance should be carried out to fully investigate the distribution of the pest in its natural habitat and the environment. The information gathered should help NPPOs to define quarantine areas and to identify plants, plant products or other articles that must be controlled when moving within these zones.
Once the eradication programme has been implemented, NPPOs should continue to evaluate the status of the campaign and make appropriate adjustments, for example based on information about the distribution of the pest in their area or when new occurrences are detected. They should also review the eradication programme at pre-set intervals to check that its objectives are being met and to assess whether it is feasible to declare the pest eradicated.
The success of eradication campaigns is dependent on a number of factors that cannot be controlled by management authorities, for example, the nature of the species and the location of an outbreak. However, it is widely believed that a high level of preparedness and response by authorities, a clear direction for the eradication process from an official body, and good coordination between involved parties can significantly increase the chances of success. It is therefore important that all eradication campaigns are documented and that the documentation should be made available, possibly in a global database. This would enable NPPOs of importing countries to verify claims about pest freedom, and it will help to improve future eradication strategies.
Monitoring
Monitoring is an integral part of any pest management program. It involves regularly inspecting a crop for the presence of pests and related damage and then deciding whether or not control is needed. This decision is based on a variety of factors, including the type and severity of pest infestation, population trends over time, the impact of weather conditions, and the effectiveness of any natural enemies that are present.
It is important to correctly identify the pest that needs controlling, because this allows you to determine basic information about it, such as how widespread its presence is and whether or not it can be tolerated. It also helps you select the best control methods and when to apply them.
There are many ways to monitor pests, from a simple visual inspection to specialized laboratory analysis. A common method is to place sticky traps in the field and count the number of insects that are trapped. This is a good method for pests such as aphids, spider mites and some psyllids that are easily counted on leaves and stems. It is important to use consistent sampling methods and keep careful records of all observations.
Other monitoring methods can include sweeping nets, which are used to catch insect pests that pass through them. In some cases, pheromones are used to lure in pests so their numbers can be estimated. Pheromones can be useful as both a monitoring tool and a control strategy, because they can be used to confuse males and prevent mating, which in turn reduces pest populations.
Observations of pests and related damage should be carefully recorded, preferably in a spreadsheet, so that trends can be seen over time and the effectiveness of any controls that are used can be evaluated. It is also helpful to record all of the observing techniques that are used, because this will help you develop an integrated pest management (IPM) plan.
Pest monitoring should also consider the status of beneficial organisms. It is important that the status of a crop be taken into account, especially if the pests are damaging crops that have been previously improved by the addition of beneficial organisms, such as cover crops or biological soil amendments.