Pest Inspection

Pest Inspection

Managing insects and mites that attack our urban ornamental plants has generally relied on the use of pesticides. Whether this is good or bad is beyond the scope of this discussion, but we must ask whether alternative controls are available. Before we can consider the alternatives, we should review our current concept of pest management. Pest inspection as opposed to “eradication” implies that some pests will always be around. It is the goal of pest management to keep the pest populations down to a level where damage is not overly evident. Infield crops, this has generally been termed an economic threshold level. In urban ornamentals, the aesthetic threshold level (the population of a pest that causes noticeable, unacceptable visual damage) is the term to be used.

Another common term used is integrated pest management (IPM), which is the selection, integration and implementation of pest control (biological, chemical, or cultural) based on predicted economic, ecological and sociological consequences. In other words, when we use pest control, we must consider the cost both to the ecosystem and human society. Using the IPM approach, three important concepts must be accepted:

No single pest control method is always used. All the control options — biological, chemical, and cultural — must be considered. Chemical control is used only when needed.

Monitoring (sampling) of the pest is constantly needed to evaluate the status (not present, present but not causing aesthetic damage, present and causing aesthetic damage, etc.) of a pest population.

Therefore, mere presence of a pest is not a reason to justify action for control.

There has been considerable misunderstanding about IPM, IPM control options and the underlying concepts. Perhaps a look at what IPM is or IPM is not will aid our understanding of these concepts.