Habitat Management
Habitat management is an innovative strategy to enhance the population of biological control agents such as predators, parasitoids, and pathogens in order to manage insect pests, disease pathogens (fungi, bacteria, and viruses), nematodes, and weeds. This
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Abstract
Habitat management is an innovative strategy to enhance the population of biological control agents such as predators, parasitoids, and pathogens in order to manage insect pests, disease pathogens (fungi, bacteria, and viruses), nematodes, and weeds. This is achieved by maintaining vegetational diversity through polycultures (intercropping, cover crops, and crop rotation), provision of supplementary food resources (pollen and nectar), managing vegetation in field margins (beetle banks, hedgerows, strip highways for habitat), shelters, and artificial nesting structures. Keywords
Encouraging beneficials • Vegetational diversity • Supplemental foods • Polycultures • Beetle banks • Hedgerows • Cover/green manure crops • Crop rotation
11.1 Introduction The natural enemies such as predators are important for managing pests of crop plants. They contribute an estimated sum of US$ 400 billion per year globally to the economic value of the ecosystem services (Van Lenteren 2006). In spite of this, the field of biological control has been neglected since the past five decades, giving more importance and resources to chemical pesticides, which are responsible for decreased biodiversity, acute human toxicity, pollution of groundwater, and reduced resilience. Hence, there is a public outcry demanding alternative pest management strategies for the effective and ecofriendly pest management. The research on pests should include their host range and habitats that are very important for their management.
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017 P.P. Reddy, Agro-ecological Approaches to Pest Management for Sustainable Agriculture, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-4325-3_11
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11 Habitat Management
In view of the recent progress in our knowledge of conservation biology, there is a need to change over from the traditional biological control to the conservation biological control by conserving the habitats for increasing the population buildup of natural enemies (Letourneau 1998; Pickett and Bugg 1998). The use of strategies that increase the effectiveness of natural enemies by manipulation of their habitat and behavioral functions is called the conservation biological control. This strategy can be applied to both indigenous (native) and introduced biological control agents that are present within the country or imported from their country of origin (Barbosa 1998). The ways by which the habitat is managed to enhance biological control in agroecosystems and to improve crop protection will be discussed in this chapter.
11.2 Habitat Management The habitat management for enhancing the biological control agents is beginning to receive attention in crop protection. The agroecological conservation of natural enemies (predators, parasitoids, and pathogens) which are already present in nature and increasing their numbers through provision of diet (nectar and pollen), overwintering sites, hedgerows, and crop diversity (polycultures) are generally believed to manage crop pests and thereby increase crop productivity (Kruess and
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