Monday, April 14, 2008

Biological pest control strives to reestablish this balance in one of three ways:


Importation. Foreign exploration is conducted to identify and collect natural enemies in the country from which an exotic pest has been introduced. Following the discovery of a potential biocontrol agent, it undergoes extensive evaluation to insure that its ecology and host range are compatible with the community to which it will be introduced and that it will not become a pest once it is released. Suitable candidates are reared and released in the new habitat in hopes that they will become established and suppress the pest population.
Conservation. A variety of management activities can be used to optimize the survival and/or effectiveness of natural enemies. Conservation activities might include reducing or eliminating insecticide applications to avoid killing natural enemies, staggering harvest dates in adjacent fields or rows to insure a constant supply of hosts (prey), or providing shelter, over-wintering sites, or alternative food sources to improve survival of beneficial species.
Augmentation. Natural enemies that are unable to survive and/or persist in a new environment can sometimes be reared in large numbers and periodically released to suppress a pest population. In some cases, small numbers of a beneficial species are released in several critical locations to suppress local pest outbreaks (an inoculative release). In other cases, larger numbers are released in a single location to flood the pest population with natural enemies (an inundative release

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