IPM programs in commonwealth of independent states and Russia

Abstract

Main principles of ecological approach to pest and its enemy management both in annual and perennial agro-ecosystem are discussed. The author's approach to cotton protection is orientated towards an elaboration of pest and its natural enemy management strategy. It is based on the usage of environment friendly means for cotton pest management, conservation and augmentation of natural enemy populations in a cotton agro-ecosystem. Correlation between arthropod species diversity, numbers of generalist predators, resistance of plant, and cotton pest population fluctuations laid the foundation of two main parameters for decision making: (a) the minimal zoophage efficiency level, and (b) the dynamic threshold of main pest species, particularly bollworm. The full or partial replacement of broad-spectrum chemical pesticides by bacteria compound and other environment friendly means is a basic demand of the elaborated cotton pest and its enemy programs in Turkmenistan and Tadjikistan. The significant achievements of its implementation in both the countries during 1970s-1980s demonstrate an effectiveness and benefits of an ecological approach to cotton protection. At present in the southern Russia the typical feature of conventional programs of insecticide treatment in apple orchards is an arbitrary combination of chemical compounds of different characteristics in ecological sense, i.e. use of environment hazardous chemicals after environment friendly one and vice versa. Such alternation of insecticides of opposite vector will never stabilize an apple orchard agro-ecosystem. In the experimental apple pest and its natural enemy program the alternation of only environment friendly compounds have been used, namely, bioinsecticides: Lepidocide™, Phytoverm™, and bioregulators: Insegar, Match, Dimmilin which all work in the same direction - stabilization of an orchard agro-ecosystem, i.e. they have equal vector. Under a trial of the suggested program apple fruit damaged by codling moth has been 1.2% in the harvest (ET is 5% of damaged fruit).Thus the possibility of codling moth management without the use of broad-spectrum chemical pesticides in practically possible.