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Categorized: Cultural control and agro-ecology management
Tagged: #CABI #CIMMYT #fallarmyworm
Increasing field biodiversity provide living space for the NEs and increase their fitness?
Maintaining crop and non-crop diversity from field to landscape-level are more useful for the natural enemies and improve conservation biological control by increasing their fitness. These measures which are popular in our communities are crop rotation, intercropping, mix-cropping, maintaining diverse field margins with many flowering and non-flowering plants, increasing the forest diversity at a landscape level. The role of each measure, as well as the combined effect, have been studied for many categories of insect pest management. There is still a matter of investigation of each component effect in case of #fallarmyworm. Some preliminary studies are going on, the results so far have shown that these agroecological measures are potential for conservation biological control of insect pest by increasing the abundance and diversity of NEs. Appreciate your comments and opinion in agroecological measures.
Thanks for the information. In Ghana west Africa, during the scouting and identification of natural enemies (Parasitoid Complex Ghana and Benin), parasitoids were more abundant and diverse in the Eastern Region in South-east Ghana , followed by Bono region in the middle belt of Ghana. This can be attributed to diversity of crops and ornamental plants in these regions. The major crops grown in the Eastern Region are mangoes (orchards), which provides parasitoids with nectar and also maize. Most of the forest cover in the Bono region is almost intact. Most tropical crops do well in these regions which implies… Read more »
Thanks for the update. Crop or non-crop diversity in – and off-farm on a spatial scale from farm to the landscape level can increase the diversity of natural enemies. Basically, flowering habitat can provide shelter, nectar, alternative food and pollen (SNAP) to the pest natural enemies that can support the diversity and abundance of pest natural enemies and improve the biological control activity. In the case of FAW, to prove these relationships need further investigations