Crop Scouting and Pest Monitoring
Crop scouting is the regular inspection, assessment and recording of crop growth and development as well as pests, diseases and other problems in your crop.
Pest monitoring is the regular recording of pest levels, e.g., on crop leaves or insect traps to determine when a pest is reaching an action threshold. Yellow sticky traps can be used to monitor the activity of many insects (whitefly, aphids, psyllids, fungus gnats) in greenhouse crops.
Scouting and monitoring are essential for the operation of effective IPM programmes, because they will help you indentify pest problems early, select the most effective controls, time the application of controls and save you money in the longer term.
BioForce Ltd can send crop scouts to your site to identify crop pest problems and to recommend solutions, as well as and advise you on the establishment and operation of an IPM programme.
The benefits from using crop scouts include:
- Crop scouts will develop a regular monitoring programme with you at the initial consultation. This will ensure pest problems are identified and remedied early.
- Crop scouts have a broad knowledge of pests, diseases and disorders. Our crop scouts are well supported by technical and scientific skills and resources.
- Crop scouts are very experienced at detecting pest problems. They have developed wide expertise on pests, diseases and disorders from visiting a range of sites over time.
- Crop scouts have broad and up-to-date knowledge on the range of control measures that could be used in your crop, and can provide cost-effective recommendations.
- Crop scouts have the expertise to monitor both pest and beneficial insects within the crop, and can recommend effective release rates of beneficial insects to keep pest populations under control.
- Crop scouts have sound knowledge on agrichemicals and can recommend appropriate chemicals to use in your integrated pest management programme, especially those that are compatible with beneficial insects.
Record keeping
The value of crop scouting and monitoring can only be realised when reliable records are kept. Knowing what happened last year or last month can make pest management decisions easier.
Record keeping for IPM often includes counts of pests and beneficial insects, crop growth and damage, chemical inputs, release dates of beneficial insects, irrigation, cultivation and other cultural practices, environmental records, etc. BioForce crop scouts can provide guidance on recording systems for your site.
If you require advice on scouting and monitoring in your crops contact BioForce Ltd, office@bioforce.net.nz .