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"Garden pests-Control"
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Cómo Defender el Jardín de Parásitos y Otras Enfermedades
Las plagas constituyen una obsesión para todos los jardineros.Además de sus efectos antiestéticos causan, a menudo, daños irreparables que comprometen la cosecha de verduras y hortalizas, de los árboles frutales o la floración de los rosales.La autora describe en esta obra los parásitos del jardín.
eBook
conscientious gardener
In his influential A Sand County Almanac, published at the beginning of the environmental movement in 1949, Aldo Leopold proposed a new ecological ethic to guide our stewardship of the planet. In this inspiring book, Sarah Hayden Reichard tells how we can bring Leopold's far-reaching vision to our gardens to make them more sustainable, lively, and healthy places. Today, gardening practices too often damage the environment: we deplete resources in our own soil while mining for soil amendments in far away places, or use water and pesticides in ways that can pollute lakes and rivers. Drawing from cutting edge research on urban horticulture, Reichard explores the many benefits of sustainable gardening and gives straightforward, practical advice on topics such as pest control, water conservation, living with native animals, mulching, and invasive species.
eBook
The economics of soybean disease control
Worldwide soybean crop yields can achieve USD$130 billion per year in farm-level sales, but around 13% of these yields are lost to disease. Effective disease management could generate significant economic benefits, and while disease management strategies do exist, their application remains limited among producers, often due to an incomplete understanding of disease incidence and severity, as well as perceived complexities of these strategies and a lack of information regarding success rates.This book presents an economic perspective on disease control, with an emphasis on producer choice among alternative technologies and potential changes in cropping systems. It provides an overview of global soybean diseases, their economic significance and management, and covers farm-level decision making, economic payoffs of alternative disease practices and key uncertainties. The book also outlines a global economic model that evaluates disease distribution and management implications.Key features include:- Extensive empirical case studies of soybean disease control, offering strategies for economically optimal management of diseases such as soybean seedling disease and root rot.- Analysis of economic factors to guide farm-level decision making.- Consideration of new technologies in disease management and their potential market-level impacts.This text is recommended for students and researchers in plant pathology and agricultural economics, as well as professionals in the soybean production industry.
eBook
Moth and wasp, soil and ocean : remembering Chinese scientist Pu Zhelong's work for sustainable farming
Moth and Wasp, Soil and Ocean tells its story through the memories of a farm boy who, inspired by Pu Zhelong, became a scientist himself.
Book
Local and landscape drivers of predation services in urban gardens
In agroecosystems, local and landscape features, as well as natural enemy abundance and richness, are significant predictors of predation services that may result in biological control of pests. Despite the increasing importance of urban gardening for provisioning of food to urban populations, most urban gardeners suffer from high pest problems, and have little knowledge about how to manage their plots to increase biological control services. We examined the influence of local, garden scale (i.e., herbaceous and arboreal vegetation abundance and diversity, ground cover) and landscape (i.e., landscape diversity and surrounding land use types) characteristics on predation services provided by naturally occurring predators in 19 urban gardens in the California central coast. We introduced sentinel pests (moth eggs and larvae and pea aphids) onto greenhouse-raised plants taken to gardens and assigned to open or bagged (predator exclosure) treatments. We found high predation rates with between 40% and 90% of prey items removed in open treatments. Predation services varied with local and landscape factors, but significant predictors differed by prey species. Predation of eggs and aphids increased with vegetation complexity in gardens, but larvae predation declined with vegetation complexity. Smaller gardens experienced higher predation services, likely due to increases in predator abundance in smaller gardens. Several ground cover features influenced predation services. In contrast to patterns in rural agricultural landscapes, predation on aphids declined with increases in landscape diversity. In sum, we report the relationships between several local management factors, as well as landscape surroundings, and implications for garden management.
Journal Article
Shifts in host–parasitoid networks across community garden management and urban landscape gradients
Biological pest control relies on interactions between herbivores and their natural enemies. Maintaining this ecosystem service requires considering herbivore and natural enemy interactions and their response to anthropogenic change at multiple scales. In this study, we used ecological networks to quantify the network structure of interactions between herbivorous insects and their parasitoids. We examined how herbivore host abundance, parasitism rates, and shifts in network structure relate to changes in local habitat management and landscape context. We sampled herbivores and parasitoids in Brassica oleracea plants at 22 urban gardens in the Central Coast of California. At each site, we measured local management characteristics (e.g., vegetation, ground cover, canopy cover) and quantified surrounding landscape composition (e.g., urban, natural, open, and agricultural cover). For the eight sites with large enough networks, we calculated three network structure metrics (interaction richness, vulnerability, and functional complementarity). We then used generalized linear and mixed models to examine relationships between herbivore host abundance, parasitism rates, garden management and landscape characteristics, and network metrics. We found that both local management and landscape composition influenced parasitism, while only local factors affected host abundance and network structure. Higher network interaction richness was marginally associated with enhanced parasitism rates for two host species and lower parasitism rates for one host species. Our results suggest that local garden management decisions may shift the structure of host–parasitoid networks, which may subsequently affect host parasitism rates, but outcomes for biological pest control will likely vary across host species.
Journal Article
Pest Control Potential of Social Wasps in Small Farms and Urban Gardens
In environments undergoing constant transformation due to human action, such as deforestation and urbanization, the emergence of pests has become a challenge for agriculture and human welfare. In Brazil, over a thousand tonnes of pesticides are used annually, causing serious environmental damage such as the decline of insect populations. It is necessary to search for control alternatives in order to reduce the environmental impact caused by insecticides. This review aims to describe the use of social wasps as agents of biological control, focusing on the perspectives of their use in small farms and urban gardens, and to discuss the benefits of using this method. Studies have shown that 90–95% of the prey captured by wasps in small crops is made of leaf-eating caterpillars. In urban gardens, wasps diversify their prey, among which potential disease vectors, such as dipterans, stand out. We outline techniques for managing social wasp colonies in small farm and urban garden settings, including the use of artificial shelters. Among the advantages of using wasps as control agents, we highlight the practicality of the method, the low operational cost, the absence of prey resistance and the decrease of the use of insecticides.
Journal Article