Research project Sustainable monitoring and control of key soil pests in outdoor ornamental production
General introduction
Subterranean pests such as grubs, leatherjackets and larvae of the vine weevil are a strongly expanding problem in various branches of Flemish ornamental plant cultivation. Problems are especially pronounced in the outdoor and container cultivation of trees and ornamental shrubs and the production of turf. In this project, ILVO, HOGENT and PCS Ornamental Plant Research together aim to develop an integrated and applicable approach to these pests. The increase in deliberate pest insects is related to the phasing out of several persistent and harmful insecticides, among other things.
Research approach
Effective and sustainable pest management rests on three pillars: (1) monitoring for rapid and accurate identification of the problem; (2) control through appropriate preventive and curative measures and (3) increasing awareness among growers and garden contractors on best available practices for monitoring and control. For targeted monitoring, we identify companies in open field or container cultivation or grass sod cultivation that experience problems with the target pests, where surveys of the target pests will be set up. Currently, no optimised monitoring method for the target pests exists yet. Therefore, various monitoring systems (including pheromone and light traps and soil sampling) will be tested, and methods accessible to growers for morphological and/or molecular identification of target pests will be developed. Control methods are also not yet in place. Therefore, sustainable methods for prevention and curative treatment will be optimised and evaluated, including crop rotation with pest-suppressing plants, the introduction and encouragement of natural enemies and the use of nematodes and fungi that parasitise pests. Finally, a cost-benefit analysis of the monitoring and control methods developed will be prepared to contrast the cost of control with the pest damage.
Relevance/Valorization
Flemish ornamental horticulture is a modern, export-oriented sector with high added value. The perennial ornamental crops looked at in this project alone generate an annual turnover of about €400 million. However, soil pests are a growing threat to this success story: losses of more than 50% are already observed in certain ornamental crops due to yew beetles and grubs. With this project, we are taking an important step towards sustainable and effective control of these soil pests, thus building the business security of Flemish ornamental growers. Through intensive cooperation with ornamental plant growers during the project and by embedding project results in manuals and the advisory applications of the Ornamental Horticulture Research Centre and the Crop Protection Advisory Service, the knowledge acquired will be directly available to the broad ornamental plant sector. These results will be regularly communicated to ornamental growers through meetings, demo days and publications. Growers will be informed of these results via practical guides for identifying and controlling target pests for growers as well as one-on-one advice to ornamental growers involved in the project.
