Prevention
Pest Management on Cannabis. It aimed to create a preliminary assessment on every component listed before the cultivation starts. Two strategies are commonly used are the mother plant analysis and general prevention. Mother plant analysis is essential since they are usually kept longer than all plants in production and has been utilized several times. The accumulation of pathogens in the tissue cells can be transmitted through clones or cuttings.
General prevention can also be done through resistance variety selection, removal of susceptible plants, airflow management, insect netting application (for indoor cultivation), or inspecting all plant materials carriage from outside of the operation.
Identification
Monitoring
After implementing the two steps above, regular monitoring to trace pest populations and damage caused by their infections should be recorded. Knowing the pest’s signs earlier will help growers to predict how long they have been infecting their plants, estimate the dominant population, and the presence of their natural enemy.
Action Thresholds
These thresholds are set by determining how much damage is acceptable and when the control is necessary. Each pest needs a different type of control and method. Since there is no official threshold established to determine the contamination limit for the final product, it has resulted in low pest tolerances. Every grower has to set their proper threshold based on the pest, crop and specific conditions to make a higher accuracy to decide the next step.
Management options
Management options help growers to combine cultural, physical, biological and chemical controls. Cultural includes variety selection, pruning and sanitation. Physical includes using a trap, barrier or manual picking. The biological method is done by using organisms such as natural enemies, beneficial insects or nematodes. While chemical control includes the use of registered pesticides available in the synthetic form or naturally-derived pesticides, as well as biopesticides.
Evaluation
Conducting a follow-up monitoring to assess how was the success rate of the applied method. Trace and record what was worked and was not to set the next step of pest maintenance.
Its interesting when you said that management options help growers to combine cultural, physical, biological and chemical controls. I want to hire a pest control service as there is an alarming amount of cockroaches in my house these days. I will need to speak to a professional so that they can help me get rid of my pest control problem. Thanks for the article!