Decoy Crop

Decoy Crop

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
Sharon Selvaggio from the Northwest Center for Alternatives to Pesticides offers up some suggestions on reducing pesticides. "We recommend using a variety of different strategies which can be cultural strategies, biological strategies before using a pesticide if you can. For example, sometimes changing the planting dates can inhibit pests such as flea beetles or cabbage maggots. Sometimes certain crop rotations interrupt the lifecycle of certain species. That's known for wire worm, Colorado potato beetle. Reducing known alternate hosts is important because some pests rely upon more than just the crop. They also may rely upon a weed for the host or some plants on the landscape. Some growers have found that mass trapping pests can be an effective alternative. Pheromone technology can help in that. Mass trapping with the aid of a pheromone was found to significantly reduce Western flower strip in strawberries. In Washington and Idaho there was research that showed that trap crops, which are crops that are more attractive to the pest species than the crop itself, if you plant trap crops around the perimeter of your field, you can often divert the pest and they found that was effective in reducing flea beetles on broccoli." Kind of like a decoy crop.
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