Pests are plants or animals that damage property, spoil food, or cause human diseases. They are controlled through exclusion, suppression, and, occasionally, biological control methods.
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Pest control aims to prevent organisms that damage plants, crops, human occupation, animal homes, and health from spreading. This is achieved by regulating the population of pests to an acceptable level. It involves methods like prevention, suppression, and eradication. Pests can be anything from bacteria, fungus, birds, weeds, rodents, insects, or nematodes that disturb the balance of nature.
Prevention is the best form of pest control. This includes keeping pests away from homes and businesses through physical barriers and removing the food, water, shelter and other resources that pests need to survive and thrive. This also includes keeping a clean environment that will deter pests from coming near or entering an establishment. This can include putting up pest screens on doors and windows, cleaning up rubbish regularly and fitting gnawing-resistant materials to surfaces that are frequently used by rodents.
Physically preventing pests from getting into a building or home can include sealing gaps, using insect repellents, covering garbage bins and using fly sprays. It can also include removing or covering up foodstuffs in kitchens and other areas where pests may enter. It can also include installing a good drainage system to remove moisture from the area.
Biological and natural predators, climate, natural enemies, and geographic features can all influence the presence of pests in an area. Many of these factors can also affect how long a pest is present in an area and the severity of its impact. For example, a pest might only cause harm to crops for a few days before dying or moving on. These factors make it impossible to eliminate all pests from an area, but there are methods that can limit their impact.
Chemical pesticides can have a damaging effect on the environment and human health, so they should be used with great care. They should be designed for the pest they are to be used on and applied according to the label instructions. Choosing the most environmentally friendly pesticide possible and following all safety precautions is important.
Integrated Pest Management, or IPM, is an ecosystem-based strategy that limits the use of chemical pesticides. It monitors pests, studies them and their life-cycle and chooses the proper control method needed based on tolerance levels and environmental factors. This approach also includes cultural practices, habitat manipulation, and the use of resistant plants.
Suppression
Pests are organisms that interfere with human occupancy or use of land, water, or structures and cause harm to people or property. They can include bacteria, fungus, weeds, rodents and insects. Some have a frightening or grotesque appearance, like spiders, silverfish and earwigs. Others bite or sting (real or perceived), such as bed bugs, bees, wasps and cluster flies. Some carry and spread diseases, like mice, cockroaches and fleas. Others stain or contaminate food and personal items, such as clothes moths and pine seed bugs.
In outdoor situations, the primary goal of pest control is prevention. However, eradication is sometimes possible, as with Mediterranean fruit fly, gypsy moths or fire ants. Eradication is rarely the goal in enclosed environments, such as offices, schools, hospitality or health care facilities. These spaces are generally smaller and less complex, making them more easily controlled than outdoor areas.
Suppression is often necessary in agricultural systems, greenhouses and other highly disturbed habitats. In these settings, species diversity is usually low and food chains are shortened, with the few well-adapted organisms dominating. This results in the few pests having very few natural enemies to control them. Therefore, augmentation—in the form of regular insecticide applications—may be needed to suppress pests in these areas.
Chemicals used to suppress pests are usually highly toxic, which makes their correct application very important. Using the right chemicals at the right time and in the correct amount helps reduce their risk to people, pets and the environment.
It is also important to identify and properly label the products used for pest control. This ensures the product is used correctly and that all legal requirements are met. It also helps people avoid harming themselves or their family members with the wrong kind of treatment.
There are many non-chemical ways to prevent and control pests. Cultural controls, such as tillage practices and cleaning of equipment between harvests to prevent disease, can help. So can changing irrigation schedules to avoid long periods of high humidity, which encourages disease. In homes, keeping trash cans tightly sealed and removing waste on a regular basis will deprive pests of their food sources. Sealing cracks and openings in walls with quality caulk can keep pests out. Lastly, setting traps or baits can be an effective way to kill pests.
Biological Control
Biological control is the use of living organisms (parasites, predators, and pathogens) to suppress pest populations, making them less damaging than they would be without intervention. While this guide focuses on insect pests, biological control of plant diseases and weeds is also possible and important. Biological control is a form of pest control that has been used since ancient times, with early Chinese growers, for example, using ants to help control citrus pests. Today, we have more sophisticated ways to use biological controls in agriculture, such as mass rearing and releasing biocontrol agents. This is often referred to as augmentation or augmentative biological control, although it may also be referred to as “inundative” biology, with the aim of increasing population densities of natural enemies in a targeted area.
Many agricultural pests are controlled by naturally occurring species of predators and parasitoids, and these are often called natural enemies or biological control agents. The goal of enhancing and utilizing this natural control is to reduce the need for chemical pesticides.
The most common type of biological control involves importing and establishing natural enemies in areas where they are not native. This is known as classical biological control, and thousands of species have been introduced to control insect pests, weeds, and plant diseases in this way since the second half of the nineteenth century.
Some biological control agents are able to establish themselves and become permanent components of the natural ecosystem in which they are released. This is a type of biological control that requires careful selection and long-term monitoring to ensure that the intended effect is achieved.
Other biological control techniques, such as conservation and augmentation of natural enemies, are more targeted and short-term in nature. For example, a grower can enhance the activity of existing predators or parasitoids in their fields by introducing them to the crop at a time when they are at their most active, such as after an application of insecticide. Other forms of augmentation involve adding natural enemies that have been propagated and released to temporarily boost their population density.
Integrated Pest Management
An integrated pest management approach focuses on prevention, monitoring, and the use of physical, biological, or chemical techniques to control pests. It is a process that balances economic costs against the risks to human health, non-target organisms, and the environment. It is an alternative to either not managing pests at all or using broad-spectrum, high-dose chemical controls. Integrated pest management is suitable for urban, agricultural, wildland, and natural areas.
The goal is to manage a pest population below the level that causes economic injury. There are four steps to this process: Threshold-based decision making – scouting and monitoring. Noticing a few wasps flying around your house doesn’t require action, but noticing large numbers of them could signal that it is time to take measures. This step is essential to prevent pest infestations and their damaging effects.
Biological control uses predators, parasites, and disease organisms to reduce pest populations. These organisms ordinarily occur in nature and are often more effective at controlling pests than the chemicals we use. Some examples include natural predators of insects, such as tachinid flies and parasitoid wasps; beneficial bacteria that infect and kill pests, such as Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt); and crop rotation to prevent the buildup of soil-borne diseases.
Chemical control involves the use of physical, biological, and cultural methods to manage pests. This includes the use of herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides to eliminate pests. These substances are normally used as a last resort and at the lowest possible dosage to minimize damage to the environment, wildlife, or humans.
Integrated pest management also includes cultural practices that help to prevent or reduce pest problems, such as maintaining soil fertility, mulching, and changing irrigation practices to reduce root disease, weeds, or drought stress. It can also involve identifying and using resistant varieties of crops. Integrated pest management is the most cost-effective and environmentally sound method of pest control. It is an ideal choice for all types of landscapes and can be utilized in residential, commercial, and agricultural settings, including schools, hospitals, public buildings, and wildlife habitats.