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Expert Offers Six Keys for Successful Pest Control
October 1, 2004 By: Rick L. Brandenburg TurfGrass TrendsThe effort to develop new pest control strategies for turfgrass never ends. The playing field is always changing as we see new regulations, new turf cultivars, new turf uses, higher expectations and demands, societal concerns over pesticide use and so on.
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This ever-changing scene keeps researchers scrambling to develop pest control strategies that are effective, reasonable in cost, reliable, environmentally sound and easy to use.
That is a tall order to fill and requires input from university researchers, industry and turf managers. It also requires a significant level of funding to keep the whole research process rolling in a productive manner.
I believe that the future is good for the continued refinement and improvement of our pest control options so that the demands of turfgrass managers as well as society will be met. In this article, I'd like to discuss where I see the research leading us over the next 10 years and beyond in my particular area of expertise: turfgrass insect pests. I believe there are six areas that will become even more significant in the future and will provide improved approaches to managing these problems.
Forecasting: One of the major factors that render insects such a problem for turfgrass managers is their sporadic nature. Some pest problems, such as certain diseases or weeds, may occur almost every year in certain locations. Insects are often not the No. 1 problem for most turfgrass managers and may occur on a more sporadic basis. Their occurrence may also vary in timing by a few days or even months from one year to the next. Therefore, the main problem with insect control for many turfgrass managers isn't the actual control itself, but rather being able to detect and respond to the problem in a timely manner.
 Figure 1 Home page for the Turffiles Web site used for disseminating turfgrass information from the North Carolina State University program. |
The abundance of environmental monitoring equipment makes keeping track of air and soil temperatures, rainfall, soil moisture, evapotranspiration (ET), and other environmental parameters quite simple, reliable and accurate. Since insects are cold-blooded and much of their development is regulated by temperature, forecasting is possible.
Forecast models have been and continue to be developed for a number of insects pests such as sod webworms, certain white grubs, mole crickets and cutworms. Some are actually in use on a limited basis, and others are still in need of local validation and refinement. Typically, however, factors other than temperature alone affect insect development. Certain aspects of insect biology such as egg-laying may be affected by rainfall, soil moisture and a possible interaction with temperature. This is true for mole crickets, for example, where spring egg-laying (and ultimately egg hatch) can vary by a couple of weeks depending on rainfall even if temperatures are the same.
Our ability to stay on top of insect problems has become even more important since the dramatic changes in insecticide chemistries that have altered the pesticides that superintendents use today. More of our current products are focused on early interception of pest problems. A little later in this article I will discuss biological control. The need to be very timely with product applications is equally true for these control agents.
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Information delivery: The ability to forecast insect pests (this is also being done extensively for diseases) leads us naturally to a related area and that is transferring time valuable information to end-users when they really need it.
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