What is Integrated Pest Management (IPM)?
Integrated pest management (IPM) is a sustainable approach to the management of plant pests (diseases, insects, mites, weeds (including invasive plants), and wildlife). IPM is holistic and science-based, emphasizing long-term solutions that are effective, economical, ecologically viable, and socially acceptable. IPM begins prior to planting a landscape or an agricultural or horticultural crop through education to understand the key factors that promote healthy plants and help to reduce future potential pest problems. Through sound cultural practices, IPM practitioners base decisions on information that is collected systematically, to minimize risks to human health and the environment.
Cultural Controls
Cultural controls involve the manipulation of the pests' biological and physical environment to make it less suitable. Examples include proper planting, pruning, maintaining proper soil pH, crop rotation, sanitation, and irrigation/water management.
Biological Control
Biological control is the use of living organisms, such as parasitoids (parasites), predators, or pathogens to suppress a pest population. Ladybeetles are common examples of predators employed in biological control. Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) is a well-known bacterial insect pathogen employed in many IPM programs.
Host Plant Resistance
Host plant resistance involves the use of plant cultivars that have inherited characteristics that defend the plants against pest attack. The use of resistant cultivars is an important step in plant pathogen, nematode, and insect pest management.
Behavioral Modification
Behavioral modification tactics involve the use of visual, chemical, or auditory stimuli to influence or disrupt normal pest behavior. Examples range from scare tactics, such as the old-fashion scarecrow, to the modern uses of sex pheromone mating disruption for insect pest
management.
Physical and Mechanical Controls
Physical controls involve the use of physical barriers to deter or kill a pest, such as exclusion netting, and kaolin clay. Mechanical control includes the use of sticky traps, fences, row covers, machinery, or manual labor (i.e., for weeding).
Pesticides
Chemical pesticides play a role when other preventive steps fail to avoid damage to the managed resource or to protect human health. Economic thresholds have been established for many pests. Pesticides are used only after documenting that they are needed according to established guidelines.
The Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) defines pesticides as any substance or mixture of substances intended for preventing, destroying, repelling or mitigating any insects, rodents, nematodes, fungi or weeds, or any other forms of life declared to be pests.
It also includes as pesticides any substance or mixture of substances intended for use as a plant regulator, defoliant, or desiccant. Horticultural oil, insecticidal soaps, and minimum risk products are also regulated as pesticides under FIFRA. The use of pesticides requires a careful
assessment of organic or synthetic chemicals and biorational pesticides. Those which pose the lowest risk to human health, non-target species, and the environment, while achieving effective control, are chosen.
Regulatory Control
Regulatory control refers to state and federal regulations that prevent the spread of pest organisms. It may include quarantine programs or mandated bans.